Bitcoin was serious high risk back in the 2009-2013 years as it was not understood and not clear what it offered. Just look how long it took and it had no competition then either as it was Bitcoin only. We complain but we seriously need to give projects time to get going.
I have been reading the book Bitcoin Billionaires and I am actually enjoying it thus far. The Winklevoss twins are fighting with Mark Zuckerberg and receive a $65 million payout plus FaceBook shares which obviously helped them buy into Bitcoin through a chance meeting with a Bitcoiner.
This takes me back a good 14 years or so when I was hustling selling all sorts of things on Ebay. I had been online selling for a good 14 /15 years by then and I suppose I was classed as an early adopter.
I had heard about Bitcoin whilst chatting with my contacts over the internet as we had discussed ways of trying to bypass the tricky payment methods. PayPal had bought Ebay and was forcing buyers and sellers to use their payment system screwing you out of hard earned percentages and holding your funds for 30 days. I preferred the one on one dealing with the seller/buyer doing bank transfers as believe it or not reputation counted for something back then and was pretty reliable to cut down risk.
PayPal had added extra rules which made buying and selling even more difficult especially living in South Africa. I could buy, but couldn't sell even though I had been on Ebay for more than 10 years with many stars showing I was reputable and genuine. This forced me to do things differently which lead me to dealing directly with both buyers and sellers.
Look at the first year growth as these types of returns were unheard of and showed the volatility from early on. No one knew about the 4 year cycle back then so those in 2014 must have seriously panicked.
Bitcoin had been mentioned as a payment method being labelled as internet money with no mention of how it was created or a blockchain. The price was less than 1 cent each and thought what if that could rise to $1 that would be something. Long story short it was too complicated and I never got involved which I am fine with. Not much was being spoken about Bitcoin back then and it was just with a handful of my contacts and the topic fizzled out.
In the book it talks about the Winklevoss twins contemplating buying Bitcoin at $7.30 each which would have been around 2012 which was a few years after I had already heard about Bitcoin. It is what you do and how you act with the information that counts as I was busy wheeling and dealing importing and supplying cell phones at this point having been forced to give up Ebay due to PayPal restrictions.
One has to remember outside of Ebay dealing/sourcing with any type of monetary transactions back then were seriously high risk as you had sites like Alibaba which was appropriate with Alibaba and the Forty thieves. The majority of deals done here were from my Ebay contacts who guided me in the right direction. I can remember so many deals falling through which even included a family member sitting in Frankfurt for a week collecting phones that never arrived. Golf balls were not even safe so it was not just high tech stuff and where I first learned about mirror image being another word for a fake/copy.
That was 10 years ago and look where we find ourselves today with approximately 23000 cryptocurrencies besides Bitcoin. No one saw this coming as to be quite honest no one really understood Bitcoin in the beginning either. This is what happens when you are deemed an early adopter as you are the one taking the risk hoping others see what you see at some point.
Looking back thinking of what we have now we are no different hoping our investments in various crypto projects we believe in are successful. Not everything will scale in price like Bitcoin has, but the belief is they will scale enough to make us wealthy and why being early counts for something.
It is incredible to think an investment that was once valued at 3 for 1 cent can turn into $1 million which I believe will happen. Just achieving $1 Bitcoin had done a 300% and was already achieving far more than ever expected. Crypto has the ability to shock and we shall see by how much over the next decade as this should be fun times. We must just have an open mind and rule nothing out as nothing is impossible.