I feel like Cryptocurrency is very mainstream these days. In almost any gas station, or grocery store there’s a BTC ATM. I was shopping at a local rural grocery store, that doesn’t even have a “normal” ATM mind you. Now has a BTC ATM. I was somewhat taken by surprise. This post will mainly talk about history of Cryptocurrency, U.S. Law Enforcement etc. The first sorta Cryptocurrency I used, was LR (Liberty Reserve). I was purchasing something from a persob, who requested funds be sent by LR. I’d heard of LR prior to that transaction, however I never used it. I’d previously used such online payment services, such as PayPal, Western Union etc. Anyhow, so I created a account, used a card to buy virtual currency then sent it the seller. I never used LR much after that. Until my PayPal account was “Limited”, meaning that I was no longer allowed to register new PayPal accounts, Send or Receive money. Due to breaking PayPal’s ToS, being underage.
So after that occured(PP being limited), I made the switch to using LR for most, if not all of my online transactions. LR also had other benefits, such as not giving any of my PI(Personal Information) to the seller. Also allowed me to buy stuff even though of the underage part, ha. After a while though, I used LR less and less. Moving on the other things in my life, that didn’t require, or accepted LR for payment. After a while a online acquaintance told me about BTC (Bitcoin). I disliked that there was a delay in the transaction being sent. However, other than that I liked it. Mind you, this was when 1 BTC was worth like $10-100 USD. So BTC became my new method of buying/selling stuff online. I didn’t understand much about how the price rises, mining etc. Just that there was a delay, and no PI was disclosed, and it wasn’t a scam, ha. I would buy BTC from “online friends” in exchange for gift cards etc. However after a while, I again moved on in life. To stuff that didn’t require, accepted BTC to buy stuff with. So I sent my friend all of my BTC (Don’t know how much I had), and deleted my wallet information. Some years later, when BTC was around $300 USD. BTC, once again attracted my attention. BTC started to gain more of my attention.
Anyway, eventually LR (Liberty Reserve) got shut down by the feds. I thought the BTC dev(s), who controlled most BTC would’ve been charged, and the feds would crash the market or something. However, that day never came. So yeah, then BTC rised to 18k usd for 1 coin. Lot of main stream attention and stuff. Since then, ETH, Bitcoin Cash have been released. Which are improved versions of BTC.
Peter Thiel recently said in an interview, and talked about cryptocurrency. Thiel said in the interview that he thinks that E-Gold may have inspired for BTC to have been created.
Thanks for reading.