Like many potential early adopters who never bothered to become actual early adopters, my story is filled with regret...

I heard about Bitcoin just after the 2011 bubble. At first I thought it was interesting, but I didn't really grasp the immense significance of it. I figured, hey, if I can print some money at home, why not? So I started GPU mining on-and-off on my PC, mostly when I wasn't using it. In a couple weeks of occasional mining, I made 0.5 BTC; this was August 2011 and the price was plummeting, so I quickly decided it wasn't worth the electricity and the trouble of turning it off when I wanted to watch a movie on my computer. So I stopped mining. Idiot.

Then I thought, never mind the chump change, this Bitcoin thing is kinda cool and there's a chance it will be worth a lot of money in the future. Why not buy a thousand dollars or so worth of BTC and keep it as a long-term speculative investment? I had a good feeling about Bitcoin and I wasn't turned off by the fact that it peaked at $30 and then crashed. I was this close to buying a couple hundred BTC at about $5. But then I discovered that the only real way of doing that is wiring money to Japan, and at the time that required that I physically go to the bank. I was waaaay too lazy for that. So I figured, meh, I'll do it some other time. And then I forgot about the whole thing until late 2012. Idiot.

Fast forward to December 2012. Price rising. I'm getting really excited. One cautious voice in my head says "$12 for a piece of virtual geek money is really expensive!". But it's drowned out by the other voice that says "This is going to be HUGE! Buy now!". But then that voice is drowned out by an even more powerful voice, that says "Still no good exchange in my area, have to wire money to Japan. Too lazy. Will definitely do it next week". And so I only really start buying on March 2013, at over $100. Don't get me wrong, I'm glad that I finally did, but I could have done it so much earlier... Idiot.

Now, do you see the terrible, vicious irony of it all? All this time I was too lazy to go to the bank and wire money to Japan, it never really occurred to me that this is exactly the sort of banking difficulty Bitcoin could easily solve. If only I had realized that Bitcoin was the solution to the problem that was keeping me from buying Bitcoin, I would have DEFINITELY bought Bitcoin. Oh, cruel fate.