dash.org
Even though I heard of Bitcoin as early as June 2009 and even mined almost 100 coins on a low-end Fujitsu-laptop (wallet's been long deleted) I later dismissed it as a nice but useless little toy and a waste of electricity. An opinion I took from a popular blogger rather than from myself. Big mistake.
Like for most, Bitcoin came back into my focus during the November-December 2013 price explosion. And, also like most, I thought: Well, too late. I blew my chance. I got captivated by Dogecoin though and the community of that, in all other respects useless cryptocurrency really did it for me. I got to know lots of interesing people and learned a lot about the philosophy and the promise of cryptocurrencies in general. Having been a liberty-minded individual (emphasis on "liberty", definitely not "liberal") my whole life, Bitcoin (the technology as a whole, not only the currency) really struck a chord with me.
I did my "due diligence" on dozens upon dozens of alternative coins ("altcoins") and after realizing most of them were pump and dump schemes I eventually got fixated on some obscure, tiny project named "Darkcoin" which held the promise of becoming the first anonymous currency. The developer was, unlike 99% of the rest, not anonymous himself. He put his real name, real face and real world reputation behind the project. That appealed to me. A lot.
After learning more and more about Darkcoin I decided to take the plunge and converted my entire Dogecoin holdings into Darkcoin. Sure enough this was shortly before the price of Darkcoin almost tripled...