I had bitcoin to spend and Tiger Direct was the first "major" retailer to take it. As soon as that slashdot post appeared in January 2014 I moseyed on over to check it out and made a purchase, probably the same day the payment method was implemented.
Almost immediately after this the first cycle of widely-publicized scams/grifts/schemes started. And then the cycle never stopped.
The market became flooded with cryptobros and instead of being used for basically nothing it became a vehicle for fraud.
Rather than being a cryptographic curiosity it became a distasteful embarrassment so I did a cost-benefit analysis found that it wasn't for me.
I still have several BTC. I do not care. 1BTC could equal a quadrillion dollars and wouldn't care. I don't want a quadrillion dollars, I want my rose bushes to look magnificent this year.
Besides, I'm a "smart tech" person so I make enough money and have no desire to live the greasy crypto lifestyle.
Where did the $24,000 in value per BTC difference between when I last touched my wallet and today come from?
It came from schmucks pouring money into a system that, eventually, will run out of schmucks.
My moral compass is such that I would rather die penniless underneath a bridge after having spent a decade in squalor collecting cans and shitting in bushes than participate in a market like crypto.
I respect the principles but with all due respect I thibk you could do a lot of good by selling them and giving the money to charity. Most of the people buying crypto are speculators, let them fund charity.
I had sat on a wallet for years, having opened one to get 5 BTC from Andresen's faucet in 2010. A couple faucets later I had a few more.
That's right! They straight up used to give away multiple entire bitcoins just for loading a website.
Eventually a "real" retailer started taking BTC so I spent approximately 1 of them on a new power supply for my PC.
The last purchase I made using Bitcoin was a power supply from Tiger Direct: https://i.imgur.com/8tW7bmN.png
I had bitcoin to spend and Tiger Direct was the first "major" retailer to take it. As soon as that slashdot post appeared in January 2014 I moseyed on over to check it out and made a purchase, probably the same day the payment method was implemented.
Almost immediately after this the first cycle of widely-publicized scams/grifts/schemes started. And then the cycle never stopped.
The market became flooded with cryptobros and instead of being used for basically nothing it became a vehicle for fraud.
Rather than being a cryptographic curiosity it became a distasteful embarrassment so I did a cost-benefit analysis found that it wasn't for me.
I still have several BTC. I do not care. 1BTC could equal a quadrillion dollars and wouldn't care. I don't want a quadrillion dollars, I want my rose bushes to look magnificent this year.
Besides, I'm a "smart tech" person so I make enough money and have no desire to live the greasy crypto lifestyle.
Where did the $24,000 in value per BTC difference between when I last touched my wallet and today come from?
It came from schmucks pouring money into a system that, eventually, will run out of schmucks.
My moral compass is such that I would rather die penniless underneath a bridge after having spent a decade in squalor collecting cans and shitting in bushes than participate in a market like crypto.