I wanted to buy drugs and had very little local access to the ones i wanted

I've been into decentralized networks from a young age. I've already been running a tor node around 2009/2010. First time I've stumbled onto bitcoin was on the "banking" section of the hidden wiki, and of course I've dismissed it as just another scam.

Then around a year later somebody published a relatively detailed blogpost about the inner workings of bitcoin on a local linux enthusiast news site, and it all just clicked. I was instantly hooked.

Studied it in Uni for an ethics course.

i wanted something easier than paypal/cashapp/etc to transact with

I first heard about it in 2011, dismissed it as a scam that the government would have shut down and then two years later in 2013 in high school economics class my teacher read us a news article about Bitcoin and my first thought was "the government hasn't shut that down yet?". I then started to do my own research and realized what the hell I was missing and jumped in with both feet from 2014 until 2017 at which point I completely left cryptocurrency because of the fees and the block wars. I came back in 2022 and went to Monero and that's where I'm staying.

SHUM

I didn't. Hah!