[Crypto Stories] How did you get into crypto?

[Fivestar4everMVP]

This is a thread I've been meaning to start for a long time now, but offline activities haven't really been giving me the chance and time to really commit myself to this forum, but so far so good, I did love to read individual stories of how we found our way into crypto, trust that alot of us may have; from interesting, to fascinating circumstances that lead us into our crypto discovery which today, we are perhaps, proud of being part of.

HERE IS MY STORY... - warning - it's a long read.

         It all began in 2015 with my desperation and quest to make money from online, and then, the rise of MMM in Nigeria and other African countries, for those who perhaps, don't know what MMM is, read about it HERE.

       I jumped on MMM after being referred to it by a friend, I moved from MMM Nigeria (30 percent interest per month) to MMM united (100 percent interest per month), I made profit for two months of my participation in the ponzi scheme, but I reinvested everything and by the third month, MMM crashed and I lost every single penny I had invested which was my life savings, back then, I was working for a company where I was earning approximately $10 to $12 per month (using today's NGN/USD exchange rate).

About a week later after MMM crashed, On our group on telegram, the dude who referred me and every other person to MMM posted saying there was a new update, that there was a new ICO coming up and big profit is guaranteed, several of us knew nothing about what he meant by ICO, but he won't explain because there was no time, he simply told us that every person interested in investing should send $10 or more worth of naira to his bank account details which he provided, he said he will convert the money to dollar himself, and invest in the ICO for each of us and keep a record of how much each of us contributed, so that he knows how much to pay each of us when the profit comes, we saw him as a mentor so there was no reason to distrust him, and over all, we were all desperate 😭.

So, we sent money to his account and filled a Google form providing the details of each of our transactions, I had no money and had to borrow $10 worth of naira to make sure I invest In that ICO hoping i would easily pay back when the profit comes in, or I will manage to pay from my salary.

Update came that the mentor have successfully invested in the ICO and showed us prove, we were all happy and became hopeful again after what MMM did to each of us.

A month later when the ICO (name of project was Kuwait coin) was supposed to come to an end, bad news broke, the Dev has vanished with our hard earned money 😭😭😭, I felt like crying myself to sleep and never waking up again, $10 for me back then was like $10 million, and worst of all, I borrowed this money, how was I going to pay back when me and my family (a wife and a daughter) can hardly feed well from my little salary? I broke down and cried like a baby.

About three days later, picked myself up and decided to move on, meanwhile, our supposed mentor have stopped communicating with us on his group after announcing that the ICO was a scam, possibly he was disappointed too and felt he has failed us, since after my research much later, I discovered that the ICO indeed existed, and it turned out a scam just as he had said.

Meanwhile, during the process of investing in the ICO, I came across a word which stuck in my mind, and that word was "Cryptocurrency", I began my search from there.
After about a week and managing to get over the ICO scam shock, I went to Google and type "what is cryptocurrency".

From that search, I found the forum we all are familiar with "Bitcointalk", I spent more than 3 days reading about bitcoin and cryptocurrencies on that forum in my free time, I finally understood a bit and felt the need to own some bitcoin, but I can't for some reasons...
-1- I had no money
-2- Converting fiat to dollar or crypto directly was a complicated process I do not understand, and won't even risk it even if I had the money to buy bitcoin at the time.

I began to search how to earn bitcoin for free, this was when I came across freebitco.in, I signed up on the site and started Fauceting for free bitcoin every hour, I earned bitcoins worth over $30 (at the time) from this site, and this was how I began my journey in crypto.

I later registered on bitcointalk, and started participating in discussions in my quest and desire to learn more about cryptocurrencies in general, I learned that it's possible to trade cryptocurrencies and make profit, after studying the subject for a while, I decided to withdraw my $30 bitcoin from freebitco.in, signed up on poloniex exchange which was then, the largest crypto currency exchange in the world - this was around 2016, I deposited the $30 worth of bitcoin on the exchange and started my journey on crypto trading, the Experiences from here is a story for another day, but so far so good, I am very proud to be in crypto today,  I now have 3 beautiful daughters who gives me joy, plus my wife ❤️, we are not rich yet but we are living very well, me, together with my wife have achieved much more than we ever have dreamt of before I got into crypto, and all thanks to God, and Satoshi nakamoto for bitcoin, and cryptocurrency in general.

So, how about you? How did you join crypto?... 🤔

[Mr. Magkaisa]

       -      As for me, I just stumbled upon crypto because of curiosity. I often watch this crypto on YouTube, and a friend of mine also mentioned that he only said that I could make money here and he didn't say how.

Of course I did; out of curiosity, I researched about it in bitcoin or crypto. It wasn't until this Bitcoin was given by Google that I registered, and that was the beginning of my reading on BitcoinTalk while studying, and it turned out to be little by little until I learned how to earn via trading and participating in signature campaigns.

[0t3p0t]

I was once an aspiring phreaker and was an active user in more or less five freenet tricks forum and there is this section on that site that shares online earning sites and apps so that was the first time I was introduced into crypto.
But I almost forgot the Bitcoin faucets that also has caught my attention until I came across Bitcointalk forum and the Altcointalks and yeah I am still here today.

[TomPluz]

It all began in 2015 with my desperation and quest to make money from online, and then, the rise of MMM in Nigeria and other African countries, for those who perhaps, don't know what MMM is, read about it HERE. 
     

Wow, I remembered those years when MMM was really a raging bull with millions (maybe) of people who joined the program worldwide...fortunately I was then sure at that time that MMM was just another scam and I did not became a part of the scheme. I did however joined many revenue sharing programs which were also popular at that time and that pushed me to get Bitcoin which had then one of the most accepted ways to pay and get paid. I am sure that many members of this forum also got started with crypto all because they wanted to join a money-making scheme which, of course, turned out to be another scam. Maybe we were so naive back then and really greedy too. And I am not wondering why so many scams are still following the crypto industry until now and will also be true into the future...sad!

[robelneo]

I stumble Cryptocurrency on one defunct investment forum, There were a lot of threads about Bitcoin there, one that got my interests is the one that has the title, Bitcoin, the future of money and on that thread it led me to Bitcointalk forum.

It took me several months before I learned the basics of Bitcoin and cryptocurrency, but I never imagined that it would reach $1000 back then.

When it hit $1000, that was the time I took Bitcoin seriously because I believe there's so much on Bitcoin that needs to be explored back then.

[Cantsay]

I started crypto with just airdrop - it was just as this notcoin and dogs hype are circulating - a friend of mine told me how he cashed out on airdrop and showed me how it was done - and back then I was still in secondary school so we really didn’t have anything to do that earned us money so we took it really serious and started hunting for airdrops - we did only those that required us to complete social media tasks while those that required user to swap from one blockchain network to another to be able to qualify we left those ones since we weren’t really funded that much.

The whole airdropping thing continued for a very long time and during this process I kept reading online watching videos about crypto until I came across Bitcointalk - at first I went straight to the bounty section and saw that I could partake in some campaign and earn some token which was very similar to the airdrop I was doing so I delved in but later on I discovered that I could earn good amount if I was able to dedicate my time to learning and so I did and learned so many things about investment, trading, how crypto works and that’s how I ended up here.

It all started from airdrops and now I’m no holding some bitcoin, it’s actually more interesting than what I’ve written but it’s something I can best say orally than written.

[|MINER|]

I heard about crypto from one of my friends. And he used to trade. Since then I am interested in this forum.  After knowing from him I entered this forum.  And I know about the forum.  It's a very big world.  I'm still learning and knowing a lot about this forum and there's still a lot that I don't know.  But I haven't started trading that way even though I am interested in it after seeing my friend doing it.  Because I think I still have a lot to learn.  Since trading is a high risk activity, after gaining good knowledge about it, I will invest total amount of money in it.

[JISAN]

I heard about crypto first in 2015 maybe. Whole thing was new to me. Bitcoin was around $4000 and my first crypto purchase was $Doge coin. I bought $Doge coin 1000 Doge at the price of 0.80$ this was the first experience. That time I used coinbase wallet to store my bitcoin.

Well by micro job I get to learn about crypto. It was fun to earn every little penny bitcoin. Now I'm gets to amazed how easy was the job to earn bitcoin. Now a days It's maybe easy to grab some alts coin. That time it was for bitcoin. I wish I had purchased some bitcoin that time and never had sold.

[albon]

My journey to come online probably started from 2009 onwards and initially i used to earn money from ptc site, 2captcha and pickwork sites as a source of earning money online. Later i found the crypto world by watching videos from youtube. I can estimate that my first investment in crypto was like $10. After few years i joined btt forum and worked on bounty there. On the other hand my first trade was like 100$ which i hung on the rope of loss. My crypto journey pretty much took my hands and it's a great strategy to survive in crypto.

[electronicash]

i was working on a project on odesk, he hired me outside the platform and just offer to pay me in Bitcoin. i don't even know what it was that time but i suspect he was a scam already. so yeah i tried doing what he wants me to do and post 300 word article in a forex forum since this is what he required. in short he hired me to spam.

and indeed after posting 3 articles he paid me $5 instead of $6 in BTC. i immediately call him scam lol  the wallet is use that time was the blockchain.com online wallet.  since then i learn BTC and landed in bitcointalk.

[libert19]

With Stellar (now rebranded to XLM) airdrop back in around 2013/'14, farmed it with many accounts but unfortunately sold it for pennies. IIRC it was first time I made a transaction on blockchain.

[Azharul]

We know that cryptocurrency market is one of the biggest market place in cryptocurrency world. So i think everyone will want to include in cryptocurrency. So i am also first including in crypto from bounty. Then it seems to me a best surprise. Because first time earn crypto from bitcoin, it was very delightful for me. I am also including in altcointalks and here i earned crypto from signature campaign. I also invest in bitcoin, so i think it also profitable for me.

[luckyledger]

With Stellar (now rebranded to XLM) airdrop back in around 2013/'14, farmed it with many accounts but unfortunately sold it for pennies. IIRC it was first time I made a transaction on blockchain.

My first one was getting USDT into staking on one of the big CEX'es, OKX

[Freemind]

One day, many, many years ago, while sailing with little Jack (little Jack is my parrot) through the pirate bay, at the bottom of the page, I saw a string of characters made up of numbers and letters, in front of that string it said: BTC. Out of curiosity, I Googled what that means and the word Bitcoin appeared before my eyes. I started reading what “blockchain” was and how it worked. Approximately 2 months later I registered for BTT to continue learning.

Along the way I have learned many things, I have helped whenever I could and I have even been a co-founder of some projects.

I have been on this forum since the end of 2020 and the experience is very positive.

[Agbe]

This is a thread I've been meaning to start for a long time now, but offline activities haven't really been giving me the chance and time to really commit myself to this forum, but so far so good, I did love to read individual stories of how we found our way into crypto, trust that alot of us may have; from interesting, to fascinating circumstances that lead us into our crypto discovery which today, we are perhaps, proud of being part of.

HERE IS MY STORY... - warning - it's a long read.

         It all began in 2015 with my desperation and quest to make money from online, and then, the rise of MMM in Nigeria and other African countries, for those who perhaps, don't know what MMM is, read about it HERE.

       I jumped on MMM after being referred to it by a friend, I moved from MMM Nigeria (30 percent interest per month) to MMM united (100 percent interest per month), I made profit for two months of my participation in the ponzi scheme, but I reinvested everything and by the third month, MMM crashed and I lost every single penny I had invested which was my life savings, back then, I was working for a company where I was earning approximately $10 to $12 per month (using today's NGN/USD exchange rate).

About a week later after MMM crashed, On our group on telegram, the dude who referred me and every other person to MMM posted saying there was a new update, that there was a new ICO coming up and big profit is guaranteed, several of us knew nothing about what he meant by ICO, but he won't explain because there was no time, he simply told us that every person interested in investing should send $10 or more worth of naira to his bank account details which he provided, he said he will convert the money to dollar himself, and invest in the ICO for each of us and keep a record of how much each of us contributed, so that he knows how much to pay each of us when the profit comes, we saw him as a mentor so there was no reason to distrust him, and over all, we were all desperate 😭.

So, we sent money to his account and filled a Google form providing the details of each of our transactions, I had no money and had to borrow $10 worth of naira to make sure I invest In that ICO hoping i would easily pay back when the profit comes in, or I will manage to pay from my salary.

Update came that the mentor have successfully invested in the ICO and showed us prove, we were all happy and became hopeful again after what MMM did to each of us.

A month later when the ICO (name of project was Kuwait coin) was supposed to come to an end, bad news broke, the Dev has vanished with our hard earned money 😭😭😭, I felt like crying myself to sleep and never waking up again, $10 for me back then was like $10 million, and worst of all, I borrowed this money, how was I going to pay back when me and my family (a wife and a daughter) can hardly feed well from my little salary? I broke down and cried like a baby.

About three days later, picked myself up and decided to move on, meanwhile, our supposed mentor have stopped communicating with us on his group after announcing that the ICO was a scam, possibly he was disappointed too and felt he has failed us, since after my research much later, I discovered that the ICO indeed existed, and it turned out a scam just as he had said.

Meanwhile, during the process of investing in the ICO, I came across a word which stuck in my mind, and that word was "Cryptocurrency", I began my search from there.
After about a week and managing to get over the ICO scam shock, I went to Google and type "what is cryptocurrency".

From that search, I found the forum we all are familiar with "Bitcointalk", I spent more than 3 days reading about bitcoin and cryptocurrencies on that forum in my free time, I finally understood a bit and felt the need to own some bitcoin, but I can't for some reasons...
-1- I had no money
-2- Converting fiat to dollar or crypto directly was a complicated process I do not understand, and won't even risk it even if I had the money to buy bitcoin at the time.

I began to search how to earn bitcoin for free, this was when I came across freebitco.in, I signed up on the site and started Fauceting for free bitcoin every hour, I earned bitcoins worth over $30 (at the time) from this site, and this was how I began my journey in crypto.

I later registered on bitcointalk, and started participating in discussions in my quest and desire to learn more about cryptocurrencies in general, I learned that it's possible to trade cryptocurrencies and make profit, after studying the subject for a while, I decided to withdraw my $30 bitcoin from freebitco.in, signed up on poloniex exchange which was then, the largest crypto currency exchange in the world - this was around 2016, I deposited the $30 worth of bitcoin on the exchange and started my journey on crypto trading, the Experiences from here is a story for another day, but so far so good, I am very proud to be in crypto today,  I now have 3 beautiful daughters who gives me joy, plus my wife ❤️, we are not rich yet but we are living very well, me, together with my wife have achieved much more than we ever have dreamt of before I got into crypto, and all thanks to God, and Satoshi nakamoto for bitcoin, and cryptocurrency in general.

So, how about you? How did you join crypto?... 🤔

The best way to get into crypto as a beginner by learning first, I'd recommend that you participate in airdrops,  This might seem stressful but it would get you acquainted with how exchanges work and how to go about selling your coins. Some people got into the crypto space by exploring web3 and mainnet airdrops. In crypto you have to learn before you earn, understanding the technicalities of the market will give you a bit of leverage