[Robert DeLong]

You could buy crypto, mining it was just assumed to be the free way to obtain it. But it was only free to mine it, if you had the ability to hack into someone else's power supply.

But yes, I too did not have the desire to mine it myself. I would have bought it had I decided to get involved. 🙂

By the time I even bothered to read about it, it was way over priced anyway for me to invest in it.

[EVO X]

I remember some of the earlier days of crypto mining. When energy prices increased, racks of computers were sent to auction markets to do something more productive.