How did people buy bitcoins back in 2011? Did you have to send a check to the se...

thinkmassive · on Jan 7, 2021

It was also trivial to mine it yourself back then, first with CPU then with GPU.

Some miners dabbled with FPGAs in 2012-2013, but the difficulty adjustment wasn't hit hard until ASICs started being used in 2013. Since then it's only been profitable to use the latest few generations of ASICs.

kinghajj · on Jan 7, 2021

MtGox and BitStamp were the two biggest exchanges back then.

gruez · on Jan 7, 2021

paypal worked, as long as you had a reputation (and therefore wouldn't chargeback).