It started up early 2011, around the same time as OVDB, and about 4-5 months before the Gawker rush. Very small at first - even DPR was a seller at the very beginning but fast moved to a strictly-administrator position. That first Gawker rush changed everything.I have been here for many of the site's new adaptations. When I first started selling on here, there was no hedging against BTC fluctuations (and this is back when BTC was making its wild swings from $1.00 - $30.00+ and all over the map), so buyers would be hesitant to purchase while the price was going up, and sellers would cancel orders while the price was going down. The few ones that stayed honest (myself included :) ) hardly made any money at this time, and the currency issues alone completely wiped out more than a couple of sellers.The forums also used to be right on SR Market, if any of you remember that. How times have changed lol. They were moved separate after the site went down for almost a week. This was around the time that BM started up, and a lot of fuck-head individuals from over here opened up accounts under the names of reputable sellers over on BM. It was a disaster, since most buyers didn't use PGP messaging to verify the vendor's identity, and was probably the largest cluster of scams in the history of this site. It was a perfect storm of timing with SR being down, the BM site admin announcing his startup a few days before, and the waves of Gawkers hop-ons finally purchasing BTC only to be desperate to spend them as the BTC price plummeted.Volatile times. There aren't too many of us left from those days, but this is a complete cake-walk compared to what it was. Multiple mods on the forums now, accounts of scammers being banned in decent response time, innovative changes implemented and in the works, a large community that is one of the best on the internetz, period. I originally started this out as just an experiment and because i was a very early adopter of bitcoins (when you could mine and rake them in at less than $.10 per coin), and being an anarcho-capitalist this was my cup of tea through and through. There were troubles, including the Canada Post strike which held up a bunch of my packages for 40 days (and they still made it through! Even to the US), and it was an uncertain and new thing. But it's been an awesome ride and I'm looking forward to the future :)