It was a process for me more than a moment. I first heard about bitcoin back in 2015 from my friend. He said that bitcoin is the future of money and told me to look into it. I did a quick search on google, saw that it costs a whopping $200+ to get 1 bitcoin, and quickly dismissed it. Back then, I thought that money had to be issued and controlled by the government, and this "digital money" would never work, because it's not regulated, and would eventually go to zero. I would occasionally check on the bitcoin price over the years, saw that it not only not gone to zero, but kept going higher and higher; then I would think that it was a scam and would still eventually go to zero.

I guess the phrase "you get bitcoin at the price you deserve" is really true. I ended up finally giving up on the notion that bitcoin will die, and decided to buy some in May 2020 when it was at $8k-$9k. I initially bought some bitcoin on Kraken and thought of it as an investment that I could flip back into fiat gains, still without understanding what bitcoin really is. Of course I left all my bitcoin on Kraken and would trade them occasionally, thinking I'm smart and could make gains doing so. And of course, I dabbled into shitcoins, buying this coin and that coin, trying to trade them to make a fiat profit. I'm glad I only lost a relative small portion of my money by foolishly trading in and out of bitcoin and also trading shitcoins. I had an account in BlockFi earning "yield", without understanding that I was the yield. I even bought myself 6 video cards, and the necessary hardware to build an Eth mining rig. The building process was very fun though, as I did it with my kids; but the now me despises the old me for helping to contribute to the biggest shitcoin's hashrate.

But in mid 2021, I got covid and had to be locked in my home for 10 days. During those 10 days, I read Mastering Bitcoin, which helped me gain a basic understanding of how bitcoin works. I also read The Bitcoin Standard, and it taught me what money is and why bitcoin is a good money, while fiat is trash. I learned that money does not have to be issued by government and most money throughout history were actually adopted from the ground up. I learned about Austrian economics and started to study it. I started to watch hours and hours of Saylor youtube videos, listening to bitcoin podcasts, and reading more bitcoin books. Most importantly, I learned that bitcoin is the best money ever created / discovered by mankind.

I sold all shitcoins in my Kraken account into bitcoin, got myself a Ledger, and withdrew all my bitcoin into cold storage. I withdrew all my coins on BlockFi in late 2021, less than 1 year before they went tits up (lucked out on the timing). I also sold all my other investments, took all my savings, and put them all into bitcoin. By then, I started listening to and reading about Matt Odell stuff: Rabbit Hole Recap, Citadel Dispatch, odell.xyz, werunbtc.com. I learned and realized the importance of privacy and the role privacy plays when trying to achieve sovereignty. So I started coinjoining my stack, started to use only non-KYC methods to obtain bitcoin, replaced my Ledger with a Cold Card, switched to use Sparrow as my main wallet, started to run a full node, and started to experiment with running a lightning node.

I began attending my local BitDevs meetup in the beginning of this year and have been going to every one. It's great to talk to other bitcoiners in person, and at the same time, stay updated and discuss about new projects in the space.

I would say the whole process from starting to buy bitcoin to actually understanding what it is took about 1.5-2 years. I'm still learning more about bitcoin everyday and there remains many books / articles / guides to read, many podcasts to listen to. I don't think this learning journey ever ends, because the more I learn, the more I realize how little I know, and the more I'm humbled by the amount of knowledge touched by bitcoin.

My journey down the bitcoin rabbit hole continues...