When my wife first got me to take a look at steem, I agreed, I told her I would give it three months to see if it was a Social Media type site that I could like. It was, and I have enjoyed my time here, at that three month mark I decided I did like it and then told myself if I am still here in 5 years I would think about learning how to buy and withdraw steem from-to-fiat.
I still have not taken the plunge to learn how to buy steem, I really should but that would mean I would also be able to wtihdraw steem, and life sometimes can get frustrating, and things can also get frustrating on steem. When we get frustrated we react, we don't often stop to think. So just under 3 years til the 5 year mark, and the next steem decision.
I was CPU mining btc way back when the diff was that low, but didn't keep it going for similar reasons. Ironically, I DID keep my keys safe and can still access that account :). I must admit that I do sometimes kick myself for not spending more spare cycles on it...
20/20 hindsight vision, we all have it, at least you kept your keys, and that which was not mined was not really lost. I figure in three years I will be kicking myself for not learning how to buy and withdraw any crypto coins, but I do not think it will be the end of the world if I do. Surviving the frustration is sometimes not an easy thing. Every day I want to quit steem block chain, especially when I get 8 completely meaningless down votes on a post, but I eventually shake it off and keep on posting, granted at a much slower rate sometimes, but I still try to get those three or four a week out.
Never looked into mining, but I wonder how much is lost from people that decided it wasn't worth it and misplaced their keys.
I got started in mining mostly because I was looking for something useful to do with my extra CPU cycles when I wasn't using my computer :). When it became something you needed specialized hardware to get any real return, I lost interest in it (mostly because I wasn't interested in making that kind of investment in it).
No doubt there are MANY out there who have lost their keys to a significant amount of crypto! I'm too much of a digital pack-rat for that :)
I wish I was a nerd ;D
I have heard that for BTC it is something like 20% and I would imagine on Steem it is quite significant also.
I didn't know your wife got you into Steem.
Buying Steem is easy enough, for those who value Steem, withdrawing is harder. :)
For me, I have disconnected my Steem frustrations from powering down quite early on. I am not much of a kneejerk reaction kind of person though.