Bitcoin at $4 — Yes Please, I'll Have Some of That

On 11th September 2011, I posted a single tweet: "#Bitcoin hits US$ 4 mark!" Today, Bitcoin trades around $120,000. That's a 30,000x return. The timestamps don't lie.

This isn't a story about getting rich. I didn't go all in on Bitcoin at $4. Like most people who were early, I watched more than I invested — the inner geek tinkering with new tech, not the investor calculating returns. The pattern recognition that comes from documenting the journey in real-time is worth more than any single trade. Assuming you act on it, which I didn't.*

*Yes, this is for you HMRC.

The Timeline

Here's what being early actually looks like:

That Cyprus tweet was during the banking crisis, when the government was seizing deposits. People were suddenly interested in money that couldn't be confiscated. The use case was becoming real.

By April 2013, Bitcoin was around $100. I was already nostalgic for when mining was cheap. The window for easy participation was closing.

Fourteen years of milestone tweets. Not analysis, not predictions, just timestamps.

What I Actually Learned

The money story is obvious. Here's what's less obvious:

1. Being Early Feels Like Being Wrong

In 2011, telling people about Bitcoin got you the same look you'd get explaining NFTs to your nan. Polite confusion at best, active dismissal at worst. The more technically literate the person, the more likely they were to explain why it couldn't work.

Being early on a major technology shift is indistinguishable from being wrong, right up until the moment it becomes obvious. And by then, you're no longer early.

2. The Window Closes Faster Than You Think

My "nostalgia" tweet in April 2013 was about mining costs. Bitcoin was $100. I was already feeling like I'd missed the easy phase.

Every technology shift has this pattern. There's a window where participation is cheap and the barrier is just knowledge. Then the window closes, often suddenly, and participation requires capital instead of just attention.

If you're paying attention to something and most people aren't, that's the window. It won't stay open.

3. The Use Case Matters More Than The Technology

I didn't tweet about Bitcoin's cryptographic elegance or its consensus mechanism. I tweeted about Cyprus, where people suddenly needed money their government couldn't seize.

Technologies win when they solve real problems for real people. Bitcoin's breakthrough wasn't the whitepaper. It was the moment someone in a failing economy realised they had an alternative.

When evaluating new technology, ask: "Who has a problem this solves, and how badly do they need it solved?" The answer matters more than the technical architecture.

4. Volatility Is The Price of Admission

From $4 to $120,000 isn't a straight line. There were 80% drawdowns. There were years where it looked dead. There were moments where the narrative completely inverted.

If you can't stomach volatility, you can't be early. The same uncertainty that creates the opportunity is what makes it uncomfortable to hold.

5. The Obvious Trade Is Never The Only Trade

I didn't make life-changing money on Bitcoin. But the pattern recognition from watching it unfold has been invaluable. I saw the same dynamics play out with cloud computing, with mobile, with containers, with AI.

The lesson isn't "buy Bitcoin in 2011". The lesson is "this is what early looks like". The next thing won't be Bitcoin. But it will feel the same: confusing to most people, obvious to a few, and the window will close faster than you expect.

The Honest Part

I should have just bought the damn coin. Not indulged the technologist in me with hardware and hash rate returns — just bought it. Everyone who was early says this. Don't buy GPUs, just gobble up the asset.

But "I should have just bought the coin" isn't actionable advice. What's actionable is this: I was paying attention, I understood enough to tweet about it, and I still underweighted my conviction.

That's the real lesson. When you see something early and you understand it, your instinct is still to be conservative. The social proof isn't there. The validation isn't there. Acting on genuine insight, against the prevailing narrative, is genuinely hard.

I've tried to apply that lesson to subsequent technology shifts. Sometimes it's worked. Sometimes I've been early on things that didn't pan out. The hit rate isn't 100%. But the process of paying attention, documenting publicly, and being willing to stake positions has been worth it.

Why This Matters Now

The timestamps matter because they prove the pattern works. Not perfectly. Not with 100% confidence. But well enough that paying attention and staking positions publicly is worth doing.

The pattern also shows something honest: I see the shifts early, I just don't always execute on them. Seeing Bitcoin at $4 and not going all in. But I did start AxisOps in 2013 off the back of the same pattern recognition — containers, infrastructure automation, and DevOps became the foundation of the business. I spot the signals. I don't always pull the trigger.

---

This article is part of The Long View — spotting signals and patterns before they're obvious.