In January 2009, I was sat in an office writing code for one of the banks that the Chancellor was on the brink of bailing out again. The bank I worked for had already been bailed out once to the tune of more than £20 billion. I was a small cog in a system I’d grown to neither like or trust. At the same time, Satoshi Nakamoto unceremoniously launched the Bitcoin network, giving life to a system that had the potential to change the world. It represented the antethesis and potential antidote to the current system but, like almost everyone else on Earth, I didn’t notice. Satoshi’s invention/discovery would go on producing blocks every ten minutes or so for a further couple of years until I heard about it, and I mostly ignored it.

The TL;DR is that despite me hearing about it relatively early, it took me until 2020 (many years after leaving my job at the bank) to take the time to actually learn about Bitcoin. For a dissatisfied geek who once worked in the broken financial system, I really had no excuse at this point.

Once I discovered the rabbit hole that is Bitcoin however, I dived straight down it. The bottom is still nowhere in sight. Fortunately I found guidance where needed on the way, thanks to the huge wealth of online resources that are provided so well and so freely by the Bitcoin community – books, websites, documentaries, blogs, podcasts, etc. I quickly learnt as much as I could and continue to do so. With not very much in the way of savings to begin with, after 6 months I was essentially ‘all in’ and running my own full node. I’ve been trying to add to my small stack of sats for my little family (daughter born @ block 673298) ever since.

This website is/was my first way of attempting to contribute something to the Bitcoin community.I’ve since gone on to build some windows-based bitcoin applications.

Feel free to submit a link of your own to BTCdir. As this directory grows over time, hopefully it will become of more interest to more people.

BTCdir doesn’t make anything through sponsorships or anything else. It is a purely voluntary project. If you find this site or my other projects useful and feel able to make a small donation towards its ongoing costs it would be massively appreciated!

Keep on stacking.

BXL909

P.S – If you think the domain name ‘btcdir.org’ sounds familiar, this might explain.