10 years ago this month. In October 2008 Satoshi Nakamoto released a paper that described a new way to exchange tokens over a peer to peer computer network. As most of us watched the finacial systems around the world fall into utter chaos. A few people decided that there must be a better way to organise ourselves without the need for the centralised and corrupt powers of the banks and governments.
Enter Bitcoin.
What started off as an interesting technical idea began to transform those that came into contact with it and who really understood what it meant.
Bitcoin's 10th Birthday
Mashed up two images from Source
Unfortunately I wasn't one of them.
Here is my Bitcoin story
I was living in Cape town, South Africa on an extended break from work. I went there on holiday and liked it so much that I bought a house and stayed for the next 8 years. During this time I was active in my field which is information technology and one day in 2010 I got an email asking me to join a mailing list for this new 'thing'. Bitcoin. For joining the email list they woud give me some Bitcoin.
I joined and had a look at the white paper from Satoshi and found it interesting but of no immediate relevance to what I was doing in distributing maths software to schools. They did send me some Bitcoin which I looked at and thought it was a novel idea.
Transfering money from my UK bank to my S.A. bank was expensive but I just didn't make the connection?
The next year 2011 I returned to the UK and sold up just about everything that I had in the house in Cape town including the computer that held the Bitcoin.
I did back up the hard drive onto a portable hard drive and then formatted the computer before I sold it. I have scoured that hard drive to within an inch of it's life but cannot find those Bitcoins. I still hunt for them occasionally like today.
I have no idea what the file was called and there were no wallets in those days just an email with the private keys in an attachment as far as I can remember.
So how much where those Bitcoin worth when I got them?
In July 2010 1 Bitcoin was worth $0.08 cents a year later they were worth a whole $1.00.
As an investment over the last 10 years Bitcoin has been nothing short of amazing. As you can see in the graph below it took a few years to reach $1.00 and in April 2011 it was worth $0.78 cents.
A bit like Steem today and Steem is only just two and a half years old.
Bitcoin took time to catch on
I often wonder whether those Bitcoins I had are still on that old computer that I sold? I have the tools to do forensic analysis of supposedly formatted hard drives and I have recovered many deleted files from formatted hard drives in the past?
Well I guess we will never know. What is your Bitcoin story?
Compared to that other much manipulated store of value. Gold. Bitcoin has outerformed it exponetially.
In 2008 Gold was priced at $869.75 a troy ounce. Today (Oct 2018) Gold is trading at $1,186.15 a troy ounce.
Gold is over $5,000 less valuable than Bitcoin!