Early Bitcoin Meetup Origins

Dan Held shares a story about the early days of Bitcoin meetups in San Francisco around 2013.

"I was still working at a small investment firm, rolling up in business casual to a developer meetup. They're like 'what the hell are you doing here?' There were only a dozen of us - it was tiny. I put pictures on Twitter where you can see the old meetup - just a cooler of PBRs and people geeking out on this thing called Bitcoin.

Then March-April 2013 hits, price goes to $260, and suddenly you've got VCs slinging out business cards. Everyone's excited, there's 150 people coming to the meetup. There's this palpable energy.

The May 2013 conference happens, the Winklevoss twins announce they bought Bitcoin. The conference had a few hundred people. If you see Coinbase's booth from videos back then, they just printed out an 8.5x11 paper that said 'Coinbase' and taped it on their booth. Brian and Fred were manning the booth themselves - that's how early it was."