I guess my first exposure to bitcoin was perhaps like many people; news articles in the mainstream media talking about hidden websites (Silk Road) where drugs and illegal materials were being anonymously purchased using an internet currency called bitcoins. At the same time the other stories circulating around bitcoin centered on websites being hacked and bitcoins being stolen. Those ‘negative’ stories meant my investigations into bitcoin and the crypto currency world didn’t go any further than when i would stumble upon another ‘bitcoin crime’ story which helped reinforce my non interest.

However it was during mid to late 2013 when I starting looking at the bitcoin story a lot closer. The price relative to the US dollar had been hugely volatile and was surging then collapsing on different good or bad news stories (again relating to drugs, hacks, closed exchanges etc). This closer inspection firstly from the mainstream media and then onto more crypto specific media and resource enabled me to find out that bitcoin wasn’t just some new form of non bank currency, but that it was a potential transformative technology. At the same time stories such as these:

“$22 investment in the virtual currency Bitcoin four years ago has brought a Norwegian man an unexpected windfall of about $850,000.”

and

“Quest for lost hard drive with £4m stored bitcoins.”

were circulating which inspired me to continue investigating more closely.

I was now looking at bitcoin in a totally different light. My investigation was now based on the technology behind bitcoin (cryptography, the blockchain, decentralized peer to peer transactions). I read Satoshi Nakamoto’s White paper and I was spending more time reading material from bitcoin.org, bitcointalk.org and coindesk.com as opposed to mainstream. I was fascinated by the process of getting hold of bitcoins (mining and purchasing via an exchange) and the wealth creation opportunity. This was now the end of 2013 and the price of bitcoin had started to skyrocket, $500 each, $1,000 each.

I started to think perhaps I was too late, but my investigations had given me the thought that there was a huge long term opportunity available from the broad use and acceptance of bitcoin. I started then to look into mining and in particular purchasing specific hardware for the task, Butterfly Labs, Cointerra, Bitmaintech etc. I then opened an account with CEX.IO as I was able to combine both mining and purchasing of bitcoins through the same account (GHash.IO for the mining and CEX.IO for the exchange). I also encountered cloud mining at CEX for the first time.

So by early 2014, I had both feet (and some money) firmly in bitcoin. I had mining hardware in my garage making noise (and heat) whilst generating bitcoins 24/7. I had traded bitcoins on the CEX.IO exchange and I had some cloud mining GHS there too.

Mid 2014 also saw a huge issue blow up within bitcoin around the 51% scenario and being a miner with my hardware pointed at GHash.IO I found myself at the heart of it. I had had a great experience with GHash my mining rewards and the ease of use of the pool was great, but now it seemed GHash was a big evil entity about to kill bitcoin all on its own. From my point of view I saw no threat to the protocol at all, GHash didn’t own the hashing power they just provided the pool for independent miners such as myself to use. The blockchain provided transparent insight into every transaction and movement of blocks etc. so the moment ‘wrongdoing’ occurred it would be witnessed and reported in seconds. Plus the thought that a company growing and profiting from the use of bitcoin would try to kill the golden goose just made no sense. That is exactly how it proved, GHash put mechanisms in place to prevent the scenario occurring again and their management was very open to dialogue and cooperation within the industry.

Now that I had immersed myself in the crypto world I found myself starting to tell people about it and what i was doing. This proved quite difficult at first as anyone who has tried to explain bitcoin to non bitcoiners will probably agree with. What I found did work was to focus on the value proposition of bitcoin itself and the huge possibilities that the technology of the blockchain could make possible. A great example I came across in helping explain the value proposition was an experiment by blogger Bruce Fenton who detailed how he had sent bitcoins to 80 people around the world he had never met, it took him 15 minutes and cost ONLY $1. That was the power of bitcoin that people could grasp 100%!!

So I was mining and trading bitcoin, my next stage saw me actually being paid and spending bitcoin. Getting paid in any currency is great, getting paid in BTC is even better!! I managed to get some paid blogging / writing contracts and I asked to be paid in BTC. This was fantastic as I was writing for people in completely different Countries so bitcoin made perfect sense (no international money transfers / banking charges here thanks). I just provided my wallet address and the BTC arrived.

I had already bought mining hardware with bitcoin, my first ‘real world’ bitcoin purchase was at a bitcoin meetup. It was held at a restaurant and the establishment took BTC. I used my Mycelium wallet on my phone to scan the QR code and send the payment. All happened without issue.

Where to from here? Well, mining has become a lot harder with rising difficulty levels and lower BTC to $USD values. I still keep my current miners at the Ghash.IO pool (they have already ROI’d so as long as the rewards exceed power costs I’ll keep them going). I also have a small amount of hashing doing solo mining (in the tiny hope that I might get super lucky and find my own block and get the 25 BTC reward)!! Mining remains a hugely important part of the bitcoin ecosystem so by continuing to mine I am also supporting the protocol.

I continue to trade on the CEX.IO exchange and have expanded my activities there to US$ and some alt coins (such as Doge) as they have expanded the trading pairs and facilities available.

So, I’ll keep on mining, trading, evangelizing, getting paid, using and saving bitcoin as long as the opportunity that bitcoin has continues to grow and be accepted by a wider and wider audience.