I want to share a story about when I first learned of Bitcoin. At the time, the conversation was one of many had during a conference, and since the topic wasn’t all that important to me at the time.
I am pretty sure the conversation happened during the TRAFFIC domain conference in October of 2011. The reason this resonates is that the conversation happened in the Ft. Lauderdale Ritz Carlton club lounge at the TRAFFIC wrap-up party. It couldn’t have happened in 2010 because the conference was in South Beach and it couldn’t have happened in 2012 because Bitcoin was widely known by then.
As the TRAFFIC conference was coming to an end, there was a dessert party in the club lounge. I was walking into the lounge and ran into some domain industry colleagues I have known for a few years. One of them was talking about Bitcoin, and if I had heard of Bitcoin before the conversation, it must have been in passing because I didn’t really know anything about it. This person explained what Bitcoin was, how it was created, and how the price had risen from virtually nothing to $30+ per coin and then back down. He talked about a big crash, but he was confident in the long term value proposition of Bitcoin despite the fact that it had risen and fallen.
The conversation was interesting, and alas, I was more interested
