By 2012 I had heard of Bitcoin, but I had thought it was totally ludicrous that it had any real value and I assumed it was just a bubble waiting to pop any day. But in 2014 I stumbled on to BTCjam, a peer to peer bitcoin lending platform, and I was intrigued. So I signed up for a Coinbase account an started lending on BTCjam. In the early days the interest rates were astronomical- hundreds of percent APR often. And, amazingly, borrowers were regularly paying these loans off. Sucked in I was, and I ended up throwing my spare money into he game. Of course, over time, it turned out most borrowers were, in the longer run, scammers or, possibly, in some cases, well intentioned folk who just eventually couldn't make the payments. The huge LTCgear scam played a major role in producing many loan defaults as well. Nonetheless, I didn't manage to lose all my Bitcoin, and actually basically broke even. The subsequent meteoric ascent of Bitcoin value enabled me to sell back my cost basis in Bitcoin and ride the profits up over the $200,000 mark. Just dumb luck!
