It was spring of 2011 when I first heard of Bitcoin. I heard Max Keiser talking about this new digital currency, and that it was somehow P2P in nature. I found it interesting but, I still didn't quite grasp the beauty of blockchain architecture. Shortly after hearing about BTC I saw the price surge from about $1 to $30 and back to $10 in a matter of about 4 months. I also learned how BTC was being used on Silk Road as a transfer of value mechanism. Bitcoin wasn't just MTGOX tokens for digital cards.
In the fall of 2011 my outdated and decrepit desktop was on its last oscillation. I had to replace it so, I went to Fry's Electronics to assemble a computer for purchase. I was extremely surprised to see GPU prices abnormally high. I thought to myself, "is there some sort of shortage in natural resources that is causing a temporary spike in price? Or was it something entirely different?" Turns out the shortage was the GPUs themselves. There was a recent demand increase in GPU cards creating shortages, and price increases. Next I started searching Ebay for GPUs and quickly found out the demand for GPUs was coming from the Crypto community. The GPUs are being used to mine Bitcoin. Not only Bitcoin, but some sort of a clone called Namecoin. And not only Namecoin, but another one called Litecoin, a scrypt based algorithm.
Being that I am a Solutions Architect, I get a chance to use a lot of carrier grade telecommunications hardware. I was impressed once again by BTC and that its physical network was becoming more and more robust. Little did I know that ASIC machines were still over a year away.
Moving into the spring of 2012 I hadn't thought much about BTC for a few months, but that was about to change. What did I do? I read the Bitcoin whitepaper. This completely and so matter of factly blew my mind. The blockchain architecture is brilliant and eloquent as it effectively solves the age old problem of "double spending". Coincidentally I read the Mastercoin whitepaper the same day, and it too was like an enormous awakening realizing that Bitcoin was only the first application (money) for this new blockchain technology.
"We have proposed a system for electronic transactions without relying on trust. We started with the usual framework of coins made from digital signatures, which provides strong control of ownership, but is incomplete without a way to prevent double-spending. To solve this, we proposed a peer-to-peer network using proof-of-work to record a public history of transactions that quickly becomes computationally impractical for an attacker to change if honest nodes control a majority of CPU power. The network is robust in its unstructured simplicity. Nodes work all at once with little coordination."
-Satoshi
- MTGOX and Willy Go Nuts:
Nearly a year goes by without to many large FUD events, but that was about to change. Bitcoin's price begins to pick up at about $20. We begin to see MTGOX in the news and the media more and more. The new ASIC mining machines are coming out and hashrate begins to explode. All of the sudden BTC price begins to go parabolic. Straight vertical, baby! Holy shit, I was right about this...or so I thought. So I pointed my miners at BTC and started to hash away verifying transactions. Little did I know that the MTGOX meltdown was just around the corner. Within 5 months Willy the bot, his insane fetish to PnD Bitcoin, and the inability to withdraw from MTGOX creates a bubble that pushes BTC price from about $100 to $1200. Insane FUD and MTGOX realization leads to massive market sell offs. But then came the alt-coin madness.
- Alt-Coin Explosion:
In early 2014 came the Alt-coin explosion. Vertcoin, a new bitcoin-like crypto currency innovates by creating one of the first anti-ASIC algorithm for distribution. Vertcoin's price goes crazy on Cryptsy and starts an era of regular pump and dumps that hasn't been seen before. Everyday numerous coins are released by anonymous devs, the pump and dump teams, and the whales create a wild wild west alt-coin environment.
It got a little comical with all of the coins being released with clone after clone and idea after idea copied. Then came the explosion of anonymous transaction crypto currencies: Dash, XMR, Anon, XC, and all the others that promised anonymous transaction networks (which is still my biggest interest in crypto currencies). Do you remember the Dash vs XC battle? Both being pumped heavily on what was at the time the top alt-coin exchange Mintpal. Remember when an alt-coin "made it" once it got onto Mintpal? We also saw the NXT and Bitshares type cryptos battle it out. And who could forget about explosion in the POW/POS distribution coins like: Blackcoin, Cinnicoin, on and on. ETH came out and was an enormous hit, but then the DAO took a hit. And now the fork has led to the latest version, ETC.
I've had a ton of fun with crypto currencies. I've enjoyed learning how to trade cryptos, reading graphs and charts. I've appreciated learning how to use all of the various wallets and user interfaces. I've enjoyed mining and following the alt-coin markets. I've relished meeting many in the community and I've also made some profits, but I am not satisfied. I am ready for crypto currencies to go main stream. To become more of a necessity. To take a sizeable chunk out of the global currency markets. Will this ever happen? If so, what do you think the time frame is?
My time frame for BTC to become +$2000 or skyrocketing is when the petro dollar peg is removed and the dollar completely collapses. Perhaps 4 to 8 years...