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.
I came across Bitcoin in 2011 when Paypal freezed my business Paypal account and a mid-5-figure amount for ‘at least 6 months’ for selling Absinthe which is perfectly legal in Europe and more than a year ago they audited my shop and approved it manually. I had to hire a lawyer to get my money out without waiting their insane 6 months, their revenge was cancelling my private account and my girlfirends’ too and giving me a lifetime ban without notification, but I tried to activate it again and writing to support even after 10 years, no chance.
Well, Bitcoin didn’t work well back then (and doesn’t until today in my opinion), but despite the fact I was selling my stuff with some other credit card and bank processing, I stayed in Bitcoin for years. Until the block size wars went insane and I proposed to solve it by doubling the block size every halving but have been laughed at by several Bitcoiners I respected until then. But I was pretty sure, I can’t be the only one to think a fixed variable for the space available for transactions and searched for other proposals… Until I came accross Monero in 2016.
Until then I was a Bitcoin maximalist, since pretty much all coins had some kind of scams built in and I started searching for the scam in Monero… And I’m doing it until today!