Got a free bitcoin about ten years ago but where is it?

whatstheplan

eskbanker said:

donglefan said:

Hello, did anyone here sign up for a bitcoin website about ten years ago which had a free offer of a free bitcoin just for joining?   I did but only just remembered, but I don't remember where it was!  If anyone could jog my memory of where this money saving offer was, I'd appreciate a tip.

Much like this guy then

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-wales-55658942

If you're taking them at face value there are many horror stories out there of early adopters that have lost millions (had they held their BTC until recent years.)  e.g. much like the BBC story, the guy that mined them for fun in the early days and had 100's if not 1000's of them.  Lost interest, then wiped the hard drive of his old PC when he bought a new one x years later.

oops!

Malthusian

whatstheplan said:

eskbanker said:

donglefan said:

Hello, did anyone here sign up for a bitcoin website about ten years ago which had a free offer of a free bitcoin just for joining?   I did but only just remembered, but I don't remember where it was!  If anyone could jog my memory of where this money saving offer was, I'd appreciate a tip.

Much like this guy then

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-wales-55658942

If you're taking them at face value there are many horror stories out there of early adopters that have lost millions (had they held their BTC until recent years.)  e.g. much like the BBC story, the guy that mined them for fun in the early days and had 100's if not 1000's of them.  Lost interest, then wiped the hard drive of his old PC when he bought a new one x years later.

oops!

Don't forget the earliest adopter of them all, Satoshi Nakamoto himself, who has lost more than anyone; they own "billions" worth of Bitcoins mined in the project's early phase that have never been used and are almost certainly lost. (If you ignore the fact that Nakamoto's Bitcoins aren't worth actually billions because there isn't enough money on the table; there isn't enough demand to buy all his Bitcoins at $54,000 each. If he suddenly reappeared with the private keys to all his Bitcoins, the price would collapse.)

Feeling regret because you claimed a free Bitcoin ten years ago and forgot about it, or bought Bitcoins at $10 and forgot about them, is like feeling regret because you thought about buying one and didn't get round to it. Hardly anyone was interested enough to do either of those things at the time, that's why Bitcoins were being given away for free and bought for buttons.

DreamerV

I can get you a free £10 of Bitcoin now, but it wouldn’t help find your missing Bitcoin! Have you tried searching the weekly emails on here and forums? I would have thought there was a huge chance that Martin would have mentioned the opportunity for a free Bitcoin for signing up to a site back then? 

Cactus_Jack

Scottex99 said:

donglefan said:

Thank you Tim.  I have no idea which website it was.  Since it was a free offer just for signing up, I wonder if someone here at MSE did the same thing and could kindly share the name of the website?

10 years ago, it was in it's very infancy, there was barely any exchanges or cold/hot wallets around most likely (I only have personal experience from 2017).

Bitcoin Faucet was one website that I know of that gave away BTC for free in the very early days.

How about search for Bitcoin/BTC in your emails/docs/files etc and see if anything comes up.

Failing that, you could buy some of your own today 

Bitcoin faucet is what I was thinking when I read this, if I recall correctly one was called the leaky tap or something similar. I don't think I ever managed to get anything out of them and if I did I think it's long gone!

Malthusian

DreamerV said:

I would have thought there was a huge chance that Martin would have mentioned the opportunity for a free Bitcoin for signing up to a site back then? 

Very little chance. Bitcoin was strictly for geeks in 2011. Opening a wallet for a free Bitcoin worth about £10 would have been too much faff for the average MSE reader interested in getting 6 bottles of Persil for the price of 2.

Barry_Bear

There's no point regrets if you don't find lost BTC because you think you would have now had however many £000s. Anyone who has seen them double, or triple, or increase in value ten or a hundred times, in reality you would have sold some along the way. So the real "if only" loss is never quite as much as it may appear with hindsight.

If you can't get it back it's not as bad as it may seem. But good luck if you do, and then you have a decision to make: sell or hold, and for how long, because whatever you do is unlikely to be totally optimal!

Scottex99

Yep anyone who is proper OG in the space and bought a load at say $200, would have likely sold a big chunk at $3k or whatever, I met someone recently who did exactly that and has never got back in. He was gutted but still made a nice profit.

There will be some people out there who bought in <$10 and offloaded at $20-60k but they be a tiny tiny fraction of crypto holders