My Bitcoin Experience

This is just a short story of my experience with Bitcoin, which has been quite the ride. I don't bother to explain what it is, because there is so much information available, like here. So if you are interested in how it all works then I recommend checking out the link, if not then continue on. It should be noted that one more person was involved but he chose to remain anonymous.

Keep in mind this isn't an actual review of any mining equipment or various companies, but rather our story and experiences with dealing with all things Bitcoin. I remember back in 2010 reading about Bitcoin somewhere while browsing the web and thinking to myself how cool it would be if there was a single global currency. While the thoughts themselves were entertaining I was very sceptical of the whole thing and dismissed it. Back in 2013, Bitcoin started hitting the headlines again, however this time, the news was a bit more serious and much more exhilarating.

I finally caved into the idea of using crypto-currencies to purchase things and help the world achieve a new level of innovation and creation. So I purchased 2 BTC from Coinbase and waited almost an entire week before Coinbase funded my wallet with 2 coins. Looking back, I can remember just how excited I was sitting around and waiting for my piece of the future. Little did I know right around my time of purchase, StuffyPillow had also purchased 2 BTC, of course at this time we had never once discussed Bitcoin with each other. Then one day out of the blue, I had mentioned to StuffyPillow that I was the proud owner of 2 Bitcoins and how cool I felt to be part of something that could really help people do more things all over the world. After he let me finish talking, he casual told me that he too had purchased 2 coins from Coinbase and how he thought about buying mining equipment for Bitcoin. A few days passed as we both discussed and dreamt about having tons of computers that mined Bitcoins all day and if things went really well then we would buy ASIC Miners.

Not even a week later we ended up ordering 4 Block Erupter Cubes and some power supplies. At about the same time StuffyPillow had just ordered several parts to build a mini server to have in the house, for recreational use. Turns out the server was more valuable than we had anticipated. The server was first used mainly as a Minecraft server and for Mumble, we had every intention to use it for Rust also, but apparently the source code wasn't released to just anyone. The server was online before we ever got the Cubes which was perfect because we ended up needing the server to be a Proxy Server. Once our Cubes had finally arrived and we got them all set up, I remember us talking about just how fun and exciting the whole process was and that's when it happened... I was addicted. Not a single website anywhere had mentioned just how addicting Bitcoin mining could be. The Cubes must had been running about 2 weeks before we were ready to purchase more equipment. We looked over our finances and asked friends if they had any interest in joining our new found addiction, which I had labelled Adventure Capitalism. While a few of our friends were interested only two of which were willing to join us which eventually just turned into one person. Soon enough we had packages arriving almost everyday for a few months and in those months we also recieved 4 Bitmain Antminer S1's.

Bitcoin also helped us become more adventurous as people, I quickly taught myself HTML5 while Stuffy learned pretty much everything there is to know about being a server administrator. We both also have been actively trying to learn everything we can about Linux, we currently are both fairly fluent with CentOS 6. I am currently learning the Mavericks operating system and how to code with it. At the time of writing this, I do currently prefer CentOS to Mavericks but that is only because I am not used to Mac yet. The more and more I work with Mavericks the more I am getting accustomed to how everything works and the differences between directories and the way everything is named. I am enjoying it now and am very impressed with just how well this MacBook Pro is built. Bitcoin has introduced us to many new possibilities and really drove us to improve many aspects of our own lives. I myself finally got motivated enough to have a dedicated media server and really expand my interest in entertainment.

As of today we are both actively interested in trying to start some sort of business. We haven't decided quite yet what we would like to do or what would work out really well for us but whatever we should choose, it will most definitely involve Bitcoin to some degree.

Last note, in our experience, the best companies we have dealt with thus far have been CoinDesk, Minersource.net, Coinbase, BTC China, Bitmain, and JonesGear. All of the mining pools we have been in have all been great, I think we are nice and settled in with BTC Guild now after all the sampling. Starting about 2 weeks ago, we have both decided to never do business with Butterfly Labs, they have been nothing but a disappoint for us. We did once successfully purchase mining equipment from them but some where down the line they started to fail at meeting their own goals. We were also pretty upset with MTGox, mostly because MTGox and Bitcoin almost went hand in hand, luckily for us we managed to get our coins out about an entire month before they collapsed.