I started thinking back to the last halving and how my life has changed. It was the beginning of the covid scare, and although I had owned bitcoin for two years at that point, I was by no means obsessed.
I mostly spent my time in a dialysis facility, wearing a mask, gown and gloves, helping my mother get through her treatments. It was boring as hell. I spent my time reading on my phone. I read a few articles on Bitcoin Magazine, then watched a few Andreas Antonopoulos videos. The publicity surrounding the halving is probably what drew my attention. My mother would sleep through most of the sessions. By the summer I downloaded Cash App and set up a small DCA, while smash buying the dips. That really was the start of my journey.
Do other stackers have specific memories of the last halving? I'd like to hear about them.
All my 4 halvings were like this...
I was literally sad and preoccupied for what I will do next. I don't know why many people are so excited about halvings, when in fact is a sad moment, you will start getting less and less sats.
And this halving that is about to happen, WILL BE BRUTAL !
reply
I think there’s excitement just because it’s a notable event. Something to count down towards. Something that means Bitcoin has completed another cycle.
reply
maybe is like the bachelor party.... the last party before your life became a nightmare, so you will enjoy it at maximum, because you will never see freedom again. πŸ˜‚πŸ˜‚πŸ˜‚πŸ˜‚πŸ˜‚πŸ˜‚πŸ˜‚πŸ˜‚πŸ˜‚
reply
I like that video. I feel like that guy a lot.
reply
Same bro, same. You sir, may have enough, but I never will. So I sell my soul for more sats.
reply
Hustle will probably be drinking whisky and beer, watching livestreams like this https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eyJ0g2FA7k0 and typing on stacker news and nostr.
Lets Go!
reply
less and less sats but more bitcoiners to share then with! that is a very exciting adventure: to seek out sats users and also bringing new people into the sats-stacking journey.
180 sats \ 3 replies \ @nym 18 Apr
I was consumed dealing with COVID also and didn’t even notice the BTC dip at the time, unfortunately.
reply
Me neither. I think that happened in March, right?
reply
37 sats \ 1 reply \ @nym 18 Apr
Yep!
reply
The first US cases were in January but no one was paying attention. China tried to lock down an entire city in January, and no one cared. I emailed my manager about a PPE shortage that was likely about to come. People would jokingly cough, "uh oh got the china flu." They weren't joking like that two months later.
I thought I was going crazy following the story. This is how I learned "expert" means fuck all, among many other lessons.
reply
107 sats \ 0 replies \ @Taft 18 Apr
I wish I had, but this is the first halving for me! πŸ˜’πŸ˜’
reply
107 sats \ 0 replies \ @freetx 18 Apr
I was set to go to Consensus 2020 which was held in NYC that year. Was going to purchase tickets for me and my friend to go, but it became clear that everything was going to be shutdown because of covid hysteria, so we cancelled.
reply
I feel the last halvings didnt mean too much. Now that btc has gained traction, its going to be HUGE!
reply
I was flying drones, learning about electronics, making YouTube videos, dating girls and training bboy moves haha.
reply
97 sats \ 2 replies \ @Cje95 18 Apr
Lol I was still trying to wrap my head around the idea of halving and understand what it was really going to do.... Like everyone else I was locked down so it did give me another opportunity to deep dive into the space
reply
I was really the same. I think I'll always remember covid as the time when I got the chance to really learn about bitcoin. The authoritarian craziness didn't hurt either as motivation.
reply
27 sats \ 0 replies \ @Cje95 18 Apr
For sure! I had dabbled in the space earlier but I didn't actually really understand it until the world shut down and I had the time to do so! Looking back it was sort of a blessing in disguise all things considered
reply
Amidst the media's sensationalized coverage of COVID, I was confidently digesting the news while celebrating a successful bitcoin purchase during the market crash.
reply
Did you actually buy it close to 3k? I heard it was tough to execute buys.
reply
I didn't buy it at the very bottom, I can't remember the price anymore, but I bought it during the upswing after the crash.
reply
Damn, I'm jealous.
reply
Building, was using GUN to deliver invoices and social graph from nodes into WebApps (lightning.page prototype) ... was conversing with @fiatjaf about it and how GUN had issues, his iteration on that keypair-relay architecture became Nostr... so I look back at that halving as when Nostr was created
A few months later I showed this POC to @super_testnet at bitblockboom, that was the best conference ever because of the fake pandemic, had a ghost flight there all to myself and got to hang out with other Bitcoiners who also weren't falling for it
Ah the good old days...
reply
Ah, ghost flights. I did skateboard in Ginza, Tokyo when there were very few people in the streets. Nice time, good memories too.
reply
Wow! Thanks for this insight. That's important history.
reply
i remember sending a message to two of my friends: "do you believe in the halving?" sure enough the number went up.
preston pysh was my orange-piller thru his "we study billionaires" podcast. since then i am not interested in his macro-takes but i am forever grateful for his input.
i am not as interested in the halving of the reward as i am in halving the number of fiat accounts in my life and hence fiat dependence.
if the number goes up 10x but my fiat-dependence is halved, that's a 20x increase in freedom. there is a push & a pull, so i strive to optimize both.
reply
"Halving the number of fiat accounts", I like this way of saying! Since where I am there is capital control I am constantly juggling with multiple fiat accounts too, trying to dodge regulations and leaking the rest to bitcoins hahaha.
reply
the ultimate fiat account to chop is the birth certificate and all accounts attached to it. that's when we learn who we are.
Servant King on Bitchute gives an introduction to what that is like.
reply
I see. I am not there yet, it reminds me I need to renew my passport. This is the only time I remember my nationality, almost never speak my mother tongue these days. Among my friends from Africa, there was one who had a fake name, fake passport and fake age (he didn't know when he was born). If there is a new plandemic acquiring a passport there could be an option...
In 2020, my life had no direction and I was still in the hood hustling, that year was what spurred my interest for Bitcoin. Even though I did sh!tcoin in 2021-2022 I fvcked around and found out and now I'm fully committed and Bitcoin has been changing my life in many ways than I can imagine and we're still early.
reply
That was a time of extreme chaos. I think we were on our 4th set of 15 days to stop the spread and it was starting to set in that all my business wasn't coming back in two weeks or even two months.
It's oddly poetic that in a time of extreme uncertainty there was absolute certainty that once block 630000 dropped block reward would drop to 6.25.
reply
I think you and I were experiencing similar uncertainty. Relying on commercial real estate with mom and pop tenants wasn't very secure for me.
reply
Yes, very odd time. Plus, my daughter was only 1.5 at the time.
The only business we really had left was with our client that owned a bunch of medical buildings, so I spent a lot of time in those buildings. My wife was so paranoid I was going to get my daughter sick she used to make me strip down to my boxers in the front hall and go take a shower when I got home. Then she used to spray the crap out of my clothes with lysol aerosol. She actually made herself sick (she thought she caught covid) spraying that crap everywhere in a small space. Her doctor told her, no you don't have covid you are inhaling half a can of lysol spray a day. Hahahaha. This was of course before we knew it really wasn't that serious unless you were old or obese.
reply
New York was ground zero for batshit crazy. My mom's kidneys were failing and she didn't want to be alone for dialysis. Fortunately her dialysis center had the best bunch of techs I could imagine. They let me in to stay with her, violating restrictions. I had to do the whole mask and gown thing, though.
reply
Anything like that was a nightmare. A friend of mine's dad was in ICU for two weeks (non covid related) and it was crazy the hoops he had to jump through.
reply
My dad was dying from prostate cancer
No one can die from covid!
Deaths unrelated to covid are ok!
reply
Terrible time
15 days to flatten the curve was a lie from the beginning
No large gatherings unless you were rioting for BLM
reply
I was fired and desperate to find new job. All my attempts were failed that's why I tried to fix my situation and these fixes determined my future I live at the moment
reply
68 sats \ 0 replies \ @k00b 18 Apr
I don't recall exactly but according to my photos that week in May of 2020 ...
selling my '84 Jettaprogramming in my backyardbrotreat the following weekend
reply
I was locked down. Aware of Bitcoin, but not enough to be aware of the halving.
A few months later I was offered a job at a centralized exchange and started studying Bitcoin. Bought my first sats in December of 2020.
reply
I wasn't there nowhere in Bitcoin in the last halving. I was born in Bitcoin only last year.
reply
I’m kind of in the same situation. I wasn’t really paying attention to Bitcoin then. I followed Bitcoin news heavily back around 2017-2018, then lost interest for awhile and didn’t get back in until last year when I joined Nostr.
reply
Trying to understand DeFi lmao
reply
27 sats \ 0 replies \ @gd 19 Apr
Watching that block count tick down, just like today :D
reply
27 sats \ 0 replies \ @suraz 19 Apr
I was unaware of Bitcoin four years ago. This is my first halving.
reply
Don't remember exactly, I think I was home.
reply
It’s amazing how much has changed since the last halving in 2020
The beginning of the insanity
reply
130 BLOCKS ⏳ TO-GO
reply
TheWildHustle was in his momma's basement watching the price rip,
Was literally running around town with an IRA distribution check in a backpack, rushing to turn the bad money into good money.
reply
Just been there for last Halving, I was just at my school office watching 'Zootopia'. The sloths were awesome in that movie. They definitely represent the Banking of our times, slowest and laziest.
reply
It's great to be able to read all these anecdotes, I was just approaching or hearing about it for the first time in 2020 during the last reduction to the half and plus all the noise of the covid, my mentality of those days did not allow me to pay attention to bitcoin. Like any good retailer, I joined the party late in 2021, after some joys, reality arrived and blood came, wounded but still alive! I continued investigating the topic and then the fall of Luna/Ust appeared, I ate the last big losses... After that disaster I dedicated myself to getting fully into the topic and learning more about, why bitcoin? And so between successes and errors, I have been starting my path to be a bitcoiner, and I find myself today in 2024, during this halving, with a better posture and knowledge about bitcoin, and although my path of things to learn is still still quite long. I already know that bitcoin is the only salvation for the common mortal and that bitcoin is hope for future generations. And understanding how FIAT works better every day, the reduction of Bitcoin is a fucking disaster for money.
reply
At work πŸ˜…
reply
Just dealing with Covid 4 years ago as a health worker.
No time to think about bitcoin or even what a halving was , no idea what it was going to happen even a few days or months later.
reply