One of the most celebrated inventors in the era of computing technology, Steve Wozniak, has spoken about his early interest in bitcoin and his attempt to buy the world’s most prominent cryptocurrency back when it was trading at $70 per coin.
Speaking on stage at a tech conference in Miami, Apple co-founder Steve Wozniak underlined bitcoin’s importance in bringing FinTech’s poster child, blockchain technology, to the mainstream. The tech mogul as asked about the ‘meteoric rise of cryptocurrencies’ and blockchain technology and their potential for transformative change in society.
To this, Wozniak spoke about blockchain technology’s core features in security and traceability, underlining them as factors behind nearly every corner of the global banking industry looking into the decentralized innovation.
“Bitcoin is the well-known cybercurrency that really bought all of this to our attention,” Wozniak said, in his response that was just as much about educating the audience as it was him praising the technology.
Wozniak then spoke about how he tried to acquire bitcoin years ago when the now-soaring cryptocurrency was under $100 per coin. Not as an investor, but as an adopter who was looking to own and “play” with it.
He revealed:
I remember getting interested in bitcoin some time ago. It was $70 for a bitcoin. Man, I went online and you had to have a special bank account at a certain bank and I couldn’t buy any bitcoin so I gave up. Eventually I got some of them at the $700 stage and then it went down to $350. Oh my gosh. I didn’t invest, I did it so I could play with bitcoin. How do you buy things and how could you sell things?
He then spoke about looking at websites that would accept bitcoin for payments and mentioned Tiger, presumably Tigerdirect. While those were early days, bitcoin has since come a long way with the likes of Microsoft, Dell, Newegg, Overstock and Rakuten among a handful of many, to accept the cryptocurrency.
Bitten by the Bitcoin Bug
Long retired from a daily tech job, Wozniak is now a philanthropist and an investor. As an early bitcoiner, he also spoke about looking for establishments – hotels and restaurants – who accepted bitcoin during his travels.
“Then I found out when I travel, you could look ahead to a city and find out which hotels, which restaurants accept bitcoin,” he continued, stating that bitcoin is “getting there” as a method of payment.
“It’s becoming…it’s getting there…it’s just not there enough to everything you’re used to [buying and selling],” he opined. “It’s getting there.”
When reminded that bitcoin is now trading at $3,000, 10 times the value of when he bought the cryptocurrency, he said:
I was just playing around to find out how to buy and sell stuff and I didn’t care about the fact that I’d lost a ton of money [when it went down, but he held on] and now I’m way up . Chuckle
Bitcoin checked into 2017 by trading at $1,000 on the first day of the year. Six months later this Sunday, the cryptocurrency had tripled to $3,000 to reach a new all-time high.
At the time of publishing, bitcoin is trading at around $2,730 on Bitstamp.
Source: CryptoCoinNews! CryptoCoinNews