Many people knew about bitcoin from the mailing lists and developer groups like IRL.
Word of mouth was also a great advertisement for bitcoin and I myself came to know about bitcoin from a friend of mine back in 2015.
Wow, it's been a decade if we come to think of it. It's already 2025 and it was surely a long journey but a fantastic one.

there are many ways why someone found out about bitcoin back in the day, maybe from a friend, a bitcoin faucet, or other media... it certainly wasn't from an ad, because bitcoin wasn't a product that needed to be marketed... the reason more and more people believed in it was purely because people saw that bitcoin had something that made it different and revolutionary compared to the traditional fiat they were used to-- this made bitcoin significantly known to people and adopted by many people globally over the years.

When something grows exponentially, that is how you reach to more people. For example when only 100 people know about this, then 10% more people knowing about it is only 110 people, but when 1 million people knows about it, then 10% more would mean 1.1 million people total.

So, the difference is that both are just 10% increase and yet one of them is only 10 people, while the other is 100k people. That is what happened to bitcoin, it took a bit of a time to grow, and from 2008 initial writing and all, to 2009 actual genesis block, only a group of people around satoshi that he mailed about it knew about it, and then by 2010 to 2011 there were just hobbyists that were interested in such a thing, but with more time, we reached maybe a billion people, because it grew exponentially.

There were many failed attempts at creating a way for people to buy and sell bitcoin. Some of them turned out to be scams, some of them got shut down by governments or lost their financial backing, some of them got hacked. Those who were around then learned quickly that self-custody is very important.


Check the reputation of the service. Get your bitcoins (or cash) out of there as fast as possible. Make several smaller purchases, rather than one large purchase to reduce exposure.


If you made the effort to learn about bitcoin and the various services before you engaged in any transactions, then there definitely was information available to help you minimize risk.

One of the best ways I found to minimize risk back then was a service called LocalBitcoins. That website would connect people locally that wanted to buy and sell and then they could meet in person at a safe and secure location to make the exchange. Taking some precautions, this was a great way to avoid needing to trust a third party with your bitcoins.