I’ll go first. For me it all started with Nostr earlier this year. I saw an article about Damus being banned in China and decided to check it out. I wanted in on the zaps so I setup a lightning wallet and haven’t looked back.

Knew about Bitcoin since 2013 but in 2016 the government of India demonetized like 80% of the circulating currency with a intent to clear out the black economy [who knows!]. The next few weeks, indians stood in mile long queues around countries to exchange their own money for newly minted notes which were of higher denominations that could not be used due to non availability of change. It was a complete shitshow as even the credit card payments failed due to higher than usual usage.

While standing in those queues in the bank, the genius of satoshi offering us a bearer asset without trusted 3rd parties clicked . Never looked back since. Bought some initially on localbitcoins and then just started doing that every time the paycheque hit and also attended the meetups as the block wars were happening. Now Bitcoin is basically my savings account, a sovereign one too.

Travel nursing working nights during the pLandemic. Had lots of time to read, so I read The Bitcoin Standard. Was holding XRP at the time but didn't really know one crypto from another.

Halfway through the book, I saw it. I understood Bitcoin enough to know the implications. There was a point where I realized, "Oh shit. This is literally perfect money."

That was it. I started buying $500 spots immediately.

Silk Road

Sex worker. No shame... 2017 during some wild times, she introduced to p2p exchanges on Paxful to pay her "anonymously."

i looked into it back in 2009. i saw it was only used on silk road and thought, "oh drugs, I don't do drugs". Didn't take a deeper look until r/libertarian started talking about it in 2011

A friend told me about Bitcoin and I'm glad he did