For me it was the plandemic. Mike Maloney -> Austrian School -> PM -> Lurk 4chan -> Bitcoin is da fuchar! -> Lemme mine BTC -> Not profitable -> Buy on Cohenbase -> Wish there was a private BTC -> Realizing I had blocked XMR general on /biz/ -> What is this? UwU -> Monerochad infopoast about atomic swap -> Holy Shit -> Sell LINK to buy XMR -> Sell ETH to buy XMR -> Swap 50 Euroinos to buy XMR -> Holy Shitterinos on Dread forum -> Dump 1 month salary into XMR -> …
Yea, that was me.
Me in 2009: university level education on cryptography, but poor student. Discover Bitcoin, but think it can’t work to replace money. Great idea, but who would want all their money and transactions visible for the world? Obvious zero knowledge proofs are needed. But I’ll buy some when I have money. Started solo mining, but didn’t have a good GPU, so gave up before mining anything.
2010-2014: slowly have some money, but damn these price fluctuations. Also afraid it would get banned or criminalized. My draw dropped to the floor as Bitcoin claimed to $1000, but I refused to buy at all time highs, even though every week there was a new ATH.
2015-2016: ok, seems stable, let me buy some bitcoin. But I invest most money in stocks. Also afraid of choosing the wrong shitcoin, so only buy Bitcoin. Crypto friends told me to buy Ethereum. I was stupid, should have listened.
2017-2020: stocks seemed better than crypto to me. I was partially wrong, partially right. No regrets, made some good money.
2021: by now, it’s evident that Monero is the technically best coin to replace money. Interest rates are low and (after Covid rebound) stocks are overvalued. Start to pour serious money into Monero in January. Then it hit 300+ around April. And I saw some MAGA idiots posting on r/Monero. Figured if the dumb money is entering, I should sell, so I sold a significant chunk.
2022 until now: slow and steady accumulation of Monero. Basically. dollar cost averaging, but always buying through low limit orders. My portfolio is always in the Green this way.