If you follow Bitcoin Twitter, you’ve probably come across some cool ideas, some inspiring thoughts, and also a lot of weird stuff, like the recent throwdown between Elon Musk and an army of bemused Bitcoiners.

But the biggest gems are often forgotten and buried under the avalanche of laser-eyed memes and guys changing their profile pictures to hot babes. So let’s have a mini history lesson…

Greg Schoen: I wish I had kept my 1,700 bitcoin

Exactly ten years ago today, Greg Schoen shared his regret over selling 1,700 bitcoin that he bought for $102. Greg has made his peace with the loss since then and regularly reminds everyone that he’s still alive and kickin’.

Greg’s story teaches us one crucial lesson: it really doesn’t matter how early you are. What matters is the understanding and conviction that long-term hodling is worth it, no matter the short term price. Trezor your coins, set up your Shamir backup and sleep soundly through the noise of the markets.

Another lesson to learn from Greg is this: if you lose your stash, don’t give up. Keep an optimistic outlook on life, no matter what.

Hal Finney: Running bitcoin

Hal’s tweet is the OG Bitcoin tweet, as it’s the first mention of Bitcoin on Twitter. Bitcoin was launched just a few days before the tweet — on Jan 3rd, 2009 Satoshi mined the Genesis block (block numbered 0 in Bitcoin protocol). Bitcoin’s first block then followed on Jan 9th (the reason for the six day delay between these two blocks remains unclear to this day).

Hal Finney was the recipient of the first bitcoin transaction straight from Satoshi, and one of the first contributors to Bitcoin code. Hal had been suffering from amyotrophic lateral sclerosis since 2009 and was cryopreserved in 2014. His final message to the Bitcoin community called Bitcoin and Me is a must-read.

Slush: Just mined my first Bitcoin!

Back when the block height sat sub-100k — and years before inventing Trezor — Slush was tinkering with bitcoin mining. He came up with the idea of pooled mining, where individual miners join forces to mine as one and divide the rewards based on their hash power contribution. Slush Pool and its mother company Braiins have always stood for the open and permissionless nature of Bitcoin: they supported SegWit activation back in 2017, developed the open-source Braiins OS and Stratum v2 protocol, and they recently became the first pool to start signalling for Taproot.

Nicolas Dorier: I will make you obsolete

In August 2017, when the blocksize war was reaching its ferocious peak, BitPay posted a blog criticizing SegWit and advocating for a larger blocksize limit (which was adopted by the Bitcoin Cash fork several weeks later, supported by BitPay and several other companies).

Dorier’s response marked the inception of BTCPay Server, a self-hosted, open-source bitcoin payment processor. Over time, BTCPay Server developed into a go-to solution for accepting bitcoin payments, especially since the implementation of Lightning Network invoicing. If you’re looking to accept bitcoin on your e-shop or website in a proper manner (i.e. Trezor support, no 3rd parties, no address reuse, etc.), BTCPay Server is a great choice.

Michael Saylor: Bitcoin as a treasury reserve asset

The CEO of MicroStrategy arguably kick-started the trend of publicly traded companies adopting bitcoin as a reserve asset. Michael Saylor has since been very vocal about his reasons for moving from dollars to bitcoin, appearing on various podcasts, hosting a virtual conference called Bitcoin for Corporations, and launching a Bitcoin education course called Bitcoin for Everybody (curated by Stephan Livera).

MicroStrategy followed the initial allocation with subsequent purchases and currently holds around 90,000 bitcoin worth around $4.6 billion. Bitcoin holdings now represent around 97% of MicroStrategy’s current market capitalization.

Trezor: The Club-Mate test

We like Club-Mate. We like to stress-test our hardware properly. So the Club-Mate submersion test was pretty obvious to us. And yes, the pictured Trezor is still functional to this day, just ask Slush.

The Trezor T was also tested this way. And you can expect the same stress-tests applied to future Trezor models as well.

PSA: please make sure you have your seed properly backed up before trying this at home.

McAfee: I’ll eat my d*ck if bitcoin doesn’t hit $500k by 2020

Listen. When a washed-up celebrity starts tweeting price predictions, it might be a good idea for your critical thinking to kick in. Don’t sell your house and pawn your belongings just because some famous account predicts bitcoin landing on a moon (or a dog landing on Mars for that matter).

McAfee has since done his best to wriggle out of the debt, but Bitcoiners are unlikely to forgive him for the money swindled from unsuspecting new investors who jumped on the hype train and bought into the ICOs he marketed. It’s all fun and games until famous people use their influence to manipulate the markets.