So some people organized themselves, launched a testnet, then the live net with a shaky network of CPU miners that dwindled in the summer of 2009. However, in autumn it picked up really fast and people got interested. This forum was created, so let's look at what happened 5 years ago:

UID - alias - rank - activity - details
1 - admin - disabled - 7 - wiped and disabled for security reasons
2 - ###
3 - ###
4 - sirius - staff - 429
5 - ###
6 - ###
7 - ###
8 - ###
9 - ###?
10 - Xunie - full - 132
11 - madhatter - new - 1
12 - nanaimogold - sr - 406
13 - SmokeTooMuch - hero - 862
14 - The Madhatter - hero - 626
15 - ###
16 - xuO4k04c6Ng - new - 1
17 - The Doctor - new - 1

Then 2010 came around. thermos has user number 35, there are still few people registering every month. I registered when the forum was 2 years old, after about 1 year of dicking around because people were trying to mine on Arduinos or something.

As you can see, the first 8 users except sirius were either very naughty (completely wiped before mod rules were made) or requested their accounts to be deleted for various reasons. Unfortunately you can't see these profiles, they are not indexed outside the site due to permission restrictions.