I remember being basically broke and learning about bitcoin in 2011....my first purchase was on VirWox, buying Linden Dollars, then trading them in the Second Life game to some lady in France for some bitcoin. I got 13BTC @ $11 each!

I got a bunch and sold them for 100% profit to people in person, and it was awesome...as the time went by, other friends and people I know wanted, so I was buying and selling to them directly, most of the time for about 20% profit, and I would repeat over and over.

The sad part was that I didnt hold....I was constantly buying more stock, selling for a profit, then buying even more stock.
Then I started trying to find other ways to make my bitcoin grow, so I 'invested' in some cloud mining websites (GAW mining), some Litecoin mining operations (LTCGear?), and a few other places (Bitfunder) where I lost most of what I had.

So now I have a very small percentage of what I could have had, if I had just been keeping some of the profits I was making, but I was too greedy.

I have been holding for a few years now...and I keep a small amount on some exchange which I trade to try and make some more bitcoin. The moral of the story is to not be greedy....keep your bitcoin safe....DONT try and 'invest' your bitcoin in get rich quick schemes.

I am not broke anymore, and do well, but I still shed a tear when I think of how much bitcoin I could have had, if I had just been more responsible.

Hal Finney must have accumulated a ton of bitcoin.
What ever happened to them?
After his death, have they been sold?

Is Karpeles Satoshi? No.
Is Karpeles DPR? No.

Ross was DPR and created SR. Maybe later there were other people who took over the role of DPR, but Ross started it and was the first.
Karpeles is not clever or skilled enough to be Satoshi, he was a bad PHP programmer, not a C programmer

Supply and demand. Maybe you dont want to sell your bitcoin, but everyone has their price.

I guarantee you that not one millionaire in the world got that way by putting money into the bank.
The interest a bank can pay you in a year, you could gain in a day with bitcoin.
If you are on the fence, do both, put $25k in each.

If your government cuts off your access, or your ISP turns off your connection....that does not mean the same conditions apply for every person in the world, that is a YOU problem, not an every person in the world problem.

There are millions of internet connections, many many ISPs and governments, the internet is decentralized, no one person or government can turn it all off, that will never happen.

Bitcoin is designed to be run on the internet, but can work any way that you can transmit data.

YOU can setup a satellite node and use bitcoin without internet. This is something setup precisely for people who have 'internet problems' in their country.

Bitcoin can work using virtually any method there is to transmit data, even radio waves, or infra red, but of course the web is the the best method.

The blockchain, and bitcoin cannot be seperated. Bitcoin will be used by people, regardless of any rules or regulations a government imposes. You cannot stop people from transacting in bitcoin, or accepting bitcoin as payment, any rules are not enforceable on users. The government cannot even effectively stop people from downloading movies and music, never mind using bitcoin which has actual value.

These are the same concerns that people have every few years with bitcoin. At the end of the day, just give it time. The odds are in favour that a new ATH will be reached within 2 to 3 years. The halving combined with the increased demand, and fomo of new users will mean the price will go up, overshoot its realistic price, and turn into a bubble and reach a new ATH.

At the moment, a news story can have the effect of the price jumping overnight....people are easily influenced. Just like before, when the price starts going up fast, there are more and more news stories about it. Everyone starts getting excited and fomo buy in, and the bubble starts to build up speed. It becomes a mania, and the price goes up 'too fast', and that means more news, and more buyers etc. until the bubble bursts.

Just make sure that you have your limit orders set with trailing stop, so that you can ride the price up, and sell near the top. My 'guestimate' is that the price will pump to around $150k before dumping down to around $45k where it will range again for the next couple of years before the next cycle.

If you are so confident, you best start getting as much as possible ASAP. A 100x increase in price is a good incentive

The internet is decentralized. It is literally millions of computers all around the world, no central point of failure. Google, Amazon and Facebook do not control the internet, if that is the extent of your internet usage, I feel sorry that you are missing out on so much more. If those companies were gone tomorrow, the internet would be just fine.
Bitcoin is decentralized, with many nodes holding a copy of the blockchain, no central point of failure.

By your logic, you may as well call it centralized since it only available in one galaxy, so if you can spread to more galaxies, then it will be more decentralized lol.

Bitcoin will reach another ATC after the next halving, just like each time before, and probably each time after.
The bitcoin price right now is based in part on supply and demand. The biggest sellers of bitcoin are miners who sell in order to cover costs. After each halving, the amount of bitcoin miners can sell is cut in half forever, while demand rises. There is a constant stream of new users, new wallets, more transactions etc. The ecosystem is constantly growing, demand is constantly growing, but traders, whales and market manipulators will mean its a little harder to see. Zoom out, bitcoin is volatile in an upward trajectory, and always will be.

You probably got scammed into buying bitcoin cash (BCH), when you were intending to buy bitcoin (BTC).
Just dont ever use bitcoin.com they are not to be trusted.

From what I understand, a bitcoin block takes an average of 10 minutes to be mined.

The genesis block or first on the bitcoin blockchain (block 0) was on January 3rd, 2009.
The second block ever mined, took 6 days to mine, not anything near 10 minutes.

Some people say that Satoshi did this on purpose, so that it was like the Bible's account of the world being created in 6 days.

Does anyone have any other thoughts or theories on the genesis block and the time taken for the subsequent second block

If some bitcoin is not equal to others, please direct me to where I can purchase those cheaper bitcoin that are less equal at the discounted rate.
Like in the real world with fiat money, if a crime is committed wtih bitcoin, while YOU are in control of it, then you can be held responsible. If a crime is committed with some bitcoin before you get it, then that has nothing to do with you.

There is a demand for virgin bitcoin, and you can pay a miner a premium to buy a complete block reward / new bitcoin, directly from them. Even Bobby Lee used to do this on the shop of BTCC exchange when he used to work there, where you could buy gold coins or bars loaded with virgin coins if I remember correctly. This is mainly for collectors though, its something people do because they dont want to be associated with any past transactions.

There is no legal or illegal bitcoin, there is just bitcoin, and they are all treated the same by wallets and nodes.

There are some companies that track bitcoin transactions where crime has been committed. They can publish information about these specific coins so that exchanges and law enforcement can track and associate an ID on an exchange with bitcoin. If there is a crime using bitcoin, and then that bitcoin is sent directly to an exchange where an ID is associated, or an address associated to an ID, then possibly it can be used as proof that you are involved in the crime. If that bitcoin is later used elsewhere, it does not mean any other users are associated with that crime.

The Silk Road marketplace had bitcoin that was confiscated by law enforcement, so was used in crime. That bitcoin was auctioned off, and is back in the bitcoin ecosystem, being used by people...that is a perfect way to see that even bitcoin that has been involved in a crime before, can be used again without any problems, and is treated equally to other bitcoin.

I remember when people used to say having 21 was good, because then you would have 1 millionth of the supply. Now I see people talking about some 6.15 number, which I have no idea why or how anyone came up with that number.
Other guys tell people having 1 bitcoin will be 'enough' in the future, and how long into the future, I do not know.
I recently saw people saying online that 1 bitcoin is not attainable for most people, and they should aim for 0.1 bitcoin, and that sounded crazy to me. Surely if something is so important, you can find a way of getting 1 bitcoin over a year or two?

Do you guys have a certain amount you are aiming for?
Personally I dont have a cap on the amount I want to get. I just keep getting as much bitcoin as I can, when I can. Stacking sats I think the cool kids call it.
I dont think I will ever stop doing this. If I need to liquidate some in order to live and buy things, i'll do that, but i'll always keep trying to replenish what I spend.

In the future, hopefully you will not need to change bitcoin to fiat

Bitcoin yes, ETH no.


If you look critically at ETH, you cant help but wonder what the big deal is.
1. Its a pre-mine coin - Remember when that was a bad thing? When did that become acceptable to pre-mine a coin, that is what we used to call a scam coin. (12 million ETH were set aside for the developers, and 60 million ETH were premined for ICO participants to buy. There is 109mil ETH in circulation, so 72 million at launch is insane.)
2. Immutability / Decentralization - It is not right for one person to have so much control that they can decide to 'fix' a problem like a DAO hack with a rollback. If Vitalik says something, or something happens to him, it affects ETH and its price. You cannot argue that. Even a dumb tweet by him can affect the price.
3. Smart contracts - Bitcoin is doing more smart contracts than Ethereum with lightning network. If you look at the amount of smart contracts on Ethereum and how they are being used, its a joke. The only real use cases that have much traction seem to be gambling websites and ponzi schemes.
4. ICOs - In my opinion this is the killer app of Ethereum, but now, there are a host of other crypto currencies that can do these just as well, for cheaper.
5. Unlimited supply - Since there is no cap on the amount, it will never be scarce and will always inflate. Good luck if you ever try to change that.

Anyone can become a developer. Some developers do work for blockstream, many do not. Bitcoin is not at the 'mercy' of anyone

There are already platforms like Gofundme, you can run your own if you have BTCPay server setup. One of the free options is for you to setup your own pages for yourself or anyone you want, where you can accept bitcoin donations direct to your own bitcoin wallet with no company in between. I setup a demo page a few months ago for one of the companies I work with in South Africa to see here: https://btcpay.bitcoinzar.co.za/apps/3HttP6btREe41CkzvGe6GDaL4Udy/crowdfund

Using BTCPay server you can basically run your own Gofundme server
If you are interested in checking out BTCPay, visit their website here: https://btcpayserver.org/

They started off slow, but seem to be getting some momentum going. I hope they keep it up!