I used to post Bitcoin news and bitcoin related posts on Instagram in 2015 when Bitcoin was near $200! Here is a quick glance at a simpler time when Bitcoin was only a few hundred dollars each and Steem had not been invented yet!

ackza (72)in #bitcoin • 7 years ago

So I remembered how back n 2015 I was into Bitcoin but bitcoin was not as big as it is now. It was just beginning to break out and things like Bitcoin debit cards were coming out, coinbase had just started, it was very different compared to now! I love looking at my old instagram posts back before steemit existed!

Here is one post I found where I mentioned how Mike Tyson was opening his own Bitcoin ATM back in 2015

can you believe it? Price of BTC was only $295 And I thought that was expensive back then! People telling you back then 'Wait for it to drop lower" were so wrong! hah people were not even rushing to buy back then! No one knew if it would ever really take off in the very mainstream way it has in 2017! But back then there was no guarantee that it would go back to $1000 like it had in 2011! See that made things very strange, it wasn't a completely up hill trend like we have experienced for the last few years now, it had already peaked at $1000 level n 2011 and dropped down to near $100 in 2013, then peaked above $1000 at the end of 2013 only to go back down to around $220 in 2015 and then slowly started picking backup through 2015 and 2016 with the price really starting to perform in the last year and a half!

See how it was down under $1000 for a few years there? and just recently picked up speed (relatively speaking) because going from $100 to $1000 is the same as going from $1000 to $10,000 in a way...people who invested at 4100 got a 10 fold return once bitcoin hit $1000 ... people who invest now at $6000 would have to see $60,000 BTC to equal that sort of gain, but I actually see $60,000 BTC and $1 trillion dollar marketcap as coming much quicker than most would expect! I see $60,000 by the end of next year!

Now back to my old instagram posts about Bitcoin, Here is another post from 2015 where I showed a twitter post about Coinbase making it on CNBC's 2015 "#Disruptor50" list and having their company brand showcased on the giant nasdaq screen in times square.

This was before Coinbase was seen as a problem realy, and more of just a great solution back before there was many ways to actually access the bitcoin market for beginners. I still recommend coinbase to people for the simple act of purchasing bitcoin but I always tell people to quickly transfer that bitcoin off coinbase to their own wallet recommending a hardware wallet like the nano ledger S or a paper wallet if you're advanced enough to set that up... or just use COinbase if you are a beginner and afraid of loosing your own private keys because in that sense coinbase is like a bank for private keys and if you want to trust coinbase thats fine. But one day if you are caught selling bitcoin for cash they will report you to the IRS and it will be seen as capital gains and youll be better off selling your bitcoin OTC over Localbitcoins.com or mycelium wallet app marketplace or just use wallofcoins or just use a Bitcoin ATM! But back then in 2015 this was a big deal for ALL of the bitcoin community!

Here is another Bitcoin related post that I made which was bout story being featured on websites like Coindesk or on the r/bitcoin subreddit about 32 Trillion dollars in hidden wealth being stored offshore.

This story may need some better evidence but it seems like we cannot deny that there are trillions of dollars of wealth held outside the system so the idea that Bitcoin will hurt the governments ability to collect taxes is credulous! There are trillions in untaxable assets offshore anyways so who cares if another few trillion disappear into the cryptocurrency cloud? Anonymous cryptocurrencies like Monero, Dash Zcash and other anonymous cryptocurrencies would be impossible to tax since they are impossible to track! And the cryptocurrency world is moving towards anonymity as anonymous cryptcurrencies gain more and more value. I just wanted to use this story about estimated 32 trillion in offshore wealth to highlight a point about how immoral it is to expect the public to adhere to rules and laws that the elite themselves don't adhere to. So why should anyone want to follow laws that the most successful members of society don't follow? I just like the question this poses, the idea that the wealthiest members of society ALREADY use systems to avoid paying taxes and yet Jaime Dimon comes on TV and claims that criminals need BITCOIN to commit crimes? Blaming Bitcoin for crime is so pathetic! Crime has been around since way before bitcoin was ever invented and drug dealers dont need crypto currency!

And here is a Marine Core Vet I helped set up a bitcoin wallet for back in 2015 and helped him raise $10 in a few day! Wish he would have just kept it and saved it but he needed it then for food! But this was a great example of the kindness of early bitcoin community!

https://www.instagram.com/p/27gA5joh9q/?taken-by=ackza770
( I will try to email him and see how he is doing and if he can get on Steemit!)

And wow here is a screenshot I took on April 15th 2015 of LocalBitcoin listings for Bitcoin and they wer $220 to $250 per bitcoin!

Back then buying a bitcoin for $100 more than market rate may have seemed expensive but just imagine everyone who was stacking up Bitcoin and waiting! Amazing to see such low bitcoin prices!

And here is a Darknet Market screenshot I recorded to show my Instagram followers what the darknet markets looked like!

Notice the fully automatic Mac 11 with silencer for 42 Bitcoins! forty two! That is over $250,000 someone made off the sale of one firearm that maybe cost $4000 at the time! Wow imagine all the arms but more often Drug dealers who just accidentally became wealthy simply because they were forced to use Bitcoin!

Wow I have more old Instagram bitcoin related posts but I will save them for another day. I want to now focus on a more recent news article I just saw today

London realtor will ONLY accept Bitcoin for 17 Million Pound mansion! It's Happening!
https://www.standard.co.uk/news/london/17m-london-mansion-up-for-sale-but-only-if-you-can-pay-in-bitcoin-a3657556.html

So here we are, in a new era of crypto currency, we are here on the final cusp of the transition where the elite of the world will start using bitcoin and cryptocurrency wand realize how useful it is. the elite of the world will start using Bitcoin and become hooked! Even for the financial elite it is not easy to transfer billions of dollars around teh world like it is with Bitcoin! We see the new president of France using Bitcoin and showing off his hardware wallet on his Instagram!
https://news.bitcoin.com/frances-newly-elected-president-brandishes-a-hardware-bitcoin-wallet/

And of course we should all watch THIS video again to remind us all of the BIG PICTURE of how Bitcoin is as big as Email or the World Wide Web when it comes to changing how our world works and never downplay the importance of Money in any society...

Look here we have a recent story from today about MIT issuing diplomas on the Blockchain in a way that allows people to VERIFY that someone actually has received a diploma from MIT!
https://news.bitcoin.com/mit-issue-diplomas-using-bitcoin-blockchain/

Or this story about LedgerX clearing its first $1 million in bitcoin trades, which is important because they are the first Federally Regulated Platform which may be a huge milestone in Bitcoin. I don't think anyone could have imagined this could even be possible back in 2015! Government regulation of bitcoin is kind of like the government admitting that is a legitimate system and not some ponzi scheme. if Bitcoin was just a ponzi scheme, why would the federal government be needing to regulate it? The amount of money passing through the bitcoin network is so vast and un avoidable that no one can deny its existence and validity as real and valuable money!
https://news.bitcoin.com/1-million-bitcoin-swaps-options-traded-ledgerx-first-week/

This July, the Commodity Futures Trading Commission ( the CFTC) has approved LedgerX as a Swap Execution Facilities ( an SEF) and approved it as a Derivatives Clearing Organization (a DCO)

This sort of Federal oversight relating to Bitcoin is just more of a symbolic milestone than anything to be worried about. Let us rejoice at the world's acceptance of crypto currency as legitimate. When Bitcoin is recognized by the entire world as valid money in the next few years, Steem will also be viewed as legitimate because it is also based on a blockchain but one that is even more advanced than Bitcoin! people must first learn what Bitcoin and blockchains are first and then they can appreciate Steem! This will be a natural process and we can just sit back and let it naturally occur. We can help accelerate the widespread use of steem blockchain using basic social media marketing techniques like the work of @jerrybanfield in promoting steemit on Facebook and youtube. if you don't have a stake in steemit you can earn one by dong work to promote steemit and recording the results in a steemit post! This strategy has been proven to be a great way to earn more of a stake like Jerry has done by making profitable posts about his promotion of steemit and posting results of his ad campaigns either free or paid, and it allows you to earn steem by working to promote steem! THEN you will have an actual stake in the network, you see? for all you beginners who really really want some steempower to hold on to, just make posts about how you are promoting steemit on social media! Ok have I repeated myself enough? :D I really think this is an under looked strategy that has enough room for SO MANY people to use! There is enough steem rewards for everyone who is willing to work hard to promote steemit!

Anyway thank you for reading! I hope you all have learned the lessons about holding your crypto? I hope you have seen the mistakes of myself and every other Bitcoin user who sold all of their bitcoins back when they were only a few hundred dollars or LESS, I hope the screenshots of the $200 Bitcoin prices make you realize how easy it could have been to buy Bitcoins cheap back then, and how we should plan for the LONG term! I don't even want to show you screenshots of people with wallets with thousands of bitcoins in them, or times when bitcoins were under 1 penny each or when you could mine multiple bitcoins in a day! On a CPU! :D Imagine THAT! Well, those days are over BUT there will ALWAYS be more opportunities!