How To Recognize Someone who's Been Involved in Bitcoin for More than Five Years
If you know someone who drinks coffee from a "ButterflyLabs" mug..... chances are, they've mined #bitcoin since 2013.
If you are unfamiliar with BFL, here's a story after the fact: https://www.theverge.com/2014/9/23/6833047/bitcoin-conspiracy-theorists-vindicated-as-ftc-shuts-down-butterfly-labs
As for me, I was one of the first 200 pre-orders for a little BFL "Jalapeno" 6-10GH/s little coffee warmer:
I think I put my pre-order in around September of 2012.... BUT, unlike a LOT of people, I paid the $60 price tag with Paypal and NOT with SIX BITCOINS.... the approximate exchange rate at the time. But then, rumblings in Cypress about a "bail in" of the banks caused the exchange rate of bitcoin to start to go up.
Within three months, bitcoins were trading at over $100, and people who committed all those bitcoin when they were $10 and who still had no miners to show for it, were getting pretty pissed. I'd almost forgotten about that $60 I'd sent off in the Fall, but when I started seeing people writing articles about the huge scam, I remembered and looked up my order. Sure enough, I was #148. But, I was still out only $60. I was long on BTC even then, the idea of giving 6 of them up didn't make any sense! Whew.
So I kept my mouth shut and enjoyed watching the value of the btc hoard I'd been slowly CPU, and then GPU mining up to that point multiply by 1400%!
Sometime in July, 2013, a small box arrived. BFL came through and shipped! (Somewhere, I made an unboxing video, but we moved soon after that, so a lot of stuff was lost in the move.) In the box along with the little Jalapeno was the mug in the picture. Awww.... wasn't that sweet? It was a totally unannounced FREE GIFT for being so late in shipping. LOL
All said and done, that miner added over 2 bitcoins to my stash as the bitcoin rate went up to $1200. After "Empty"GOX went bust, so did the price, and the little Jalapeno couldn't even generate enough Satoshis to use it to warm coffee.
Anyway, I was sitting here drinking coffee and my eyes fell on the mug and I thought I'd share. Happy Hodling!
For further reading into the Great ButterflyLabs Scam of the 2012-2014 era of bitcoin mining, check out this monster thread:
https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=114329.0