My first Bitcoin buy was a bit sad, because I had the feeling at the time, that I was too late for the party. I bought when the price was around $400+ and I was thinking that $500 would be the All time high price... and I would not make a huge profit.    A little while after that, the price increased to $1000+ and I sold many of those coins. 

To my surprise, the Bitcoin price just kept on going up ...so I bought more and I hoarded those coins. I sold many of them for a huge profit at $18 000 and then again at $25 000 and the last ones at $40 000. ( I had no regrets, because I paid of most of my debt and I had some extra money in the Bank..... just waiting for the price to drop again ) 

Its been so long ago that I barely remember how I felt about Bitcoins back then and what I thought about the crypto currencies. Back in 2015/2016 I was heavily trading CSGO skins, I put some money into the game only with the goal to trade for my first knife, after that it had to be an expensive AWP skins and so on. Eventually I had too much money in the game, and once I got lucky in some case openings, I really needed to withdraw some money out of my steam account. The fastest and cheapest option on the big sites was with Bitcoins, so I made my first bitcoins transaction and owned my first crypto coins. As far as I remember it, I didn't think too much about the cryptos itself. For me it was more a tool to transfer money out of my CSGO inventory. My biggest investment mistake was to sell all my bitcoins back in the day, I wanted to have the money on my bank account and didn't save any bitcoins at all. That why I feel a bit bad about my first bitcoin transactions.

My initial reaction was not like this. Because I wasn't certain that how it worked. I simply treat it like any other currency. But I'm learning more about Bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies every day. I'm proud to say that I'm now involved with cryptocurrency in some way. Although I lost a lot of money in trading, it has helped me a lot on the other hand. You did a good thing by explaining cryptocurrency to others. They are learning from the start of their journey.

Just as you said to you bitcoin was just a means to an end so it was natural that you decided to sell your bitcoin at the time and got fiat instead, besides as you were not that interested in bitcoin at the time even if you had for some reason held those coins it is possible you would have sold for a bad price and maybe you could have even lost money in the process as well, so do not feel bad about it, because even if a great deal of people wish they had invested in bitcoin years before they actually did, there is a reason why that was not the case.

The first time I bought Bitcoin was an excited discussion with my friends all night and I bought the first one carefully. Because my friend has already made money in cryptocurrency, I still trust him and talk to him about my thoughts. I was actually very excited after the purchase, and kept paying attention to the price of Bitcoin, hoping to make it rise even higher.

What, your girlfriend gifted you bitcoin? Wow, I think that's great, mate. You may be lucky to have a girl who knows bitcoin for a long time and may have been a longtime investor in it. Have you ever been told about it? lol

Nowadays I am no longer surprised when I find a girl has bitcoins in her wallet. Bitcoin is very popular now, and naturally there are many people who are willing to invest in it. The popularity of crypto is getting better, so of course it will become something that is not strange anymore among people.

Sorry for the semi-necro but had to comment when I saw this.

I've been using Bitcoin since 2016 and rather actively since, with at least one commercial spend a week, I get paid for freelance work several times a month -- those are my direct p2p on chains. I do make many more sends for online services -- but I don't really consider those as useful since I don't know if the service eventually settles some or all to fiat. Excluding sells, which I do p2p mainly.

Sorry to digress but my point was I also "harboured" old sats from 2016 until 2021 when I decided to chuck away all my legacy wallets. Other than the very very first I ever got, which was given to me, I also got my first payments in BTC in that year -- also around the $400 mark. Funny enough, majority of my payments in those days were actually altcoins! Doge, ETH, LTC especially, but I exchanged most of those to BTC anyway as I just wanted to keep my savings in a single wallet.

Didn't consolidate those for a really long time, there was a funny sentimentality around those Bitcoin as:
- it was a period of big change in my life, switching careers to almost fully remote
- it was my 2nd time freelancing, after over a decade, and using Bitcoin instead of PayPal
- it was the beginning of my financial reboot (I spent literally all my savings to make a life move, fitting everything in a suitcase to take a chance on a new life).

No regrets for having to liquidate most of it in 2020/21, well before ATH but catching the 20k mark. I am still much better off than I was in 2016, and could never possibly have saved enough for what I needed money for, had I not accepted Bitcoin.

Owning my first bitcoin was really not a big deal to me, my experience started from here I learned about it. Then forge ahead to buy my first bitcoin which I did not purchase from an exchange but was from a holder I know very well, it was in a form of P2P where he sent btc worth 48$ to my wallet back then all I make use of was Binance before I learned about Not you key not your coin in this forum which made me learn more ways to protect my assets..
After my last btc purchase I move all my btc from the exchange yo my private wallet.

It is true that many people lost their bitcoins because they lost hope in the project. I think this was not because bitcoin was bad, but because there were many shady companies around that time that stole a lot of bitcoins and made politics sanction bitcoin. Bitcoin survived this, but still we see the crypto space as a space full of scammers sadly. I think we can only end this, with enough education on how to keep the coins safe.

The first time I bought Bitcoin it took 2 months, after that I learned how to use it and how to use it properly, even though at first I found it difficult to learn how to transfer, over time I just got up the courage to buy it, indeed this is too late for me to enjoy it  , but I remain optimistic about the current Bitcoin price, it doesn't mean that I failed when the price went up I bought it and in the middle of this year, the price actually decreased, it's not a matter of falling or rising Bitcoin prices, but patience in investing is the main capital to be successful  , until now my first Bitcoin purchase, I still keep it and I'm just starting to join this forum, so that my experience in the Crypto world is wider and get information in this forum, because the best information is in this forum, that's why now  I know more about new things in this forum, and many discussions like this hit  i have different experiences..