It’s essential for anyone truly interested in understanding why cryptocurrencies are important now and will continue to prove to be well in the future, by going back to posts like these, and introducing, or perhaps reintroducing yourself to the ideas being presented at the start.

DW;PR

(Didn't Watch; Prefer to Read)

• Satoshi’s intro:

History has been made thanks to Satoshi Nakamoto and this time, this history is cryptographically proven, immutable and won’t be tampered by or injected with the political bias often found in history books.

• Someone wanting to sell 10,000 BTC for $50 (and no one wanted to pay that high of a price for it:)

Note the struggles of trying to send the fiat money for the BTC exchange, hilarious in comparison to the fact that they are trading with a tool that is borderless. Also, because of a lack of interest in that price, the auction never took off and the coins remained with the original owner.

• Gavin Andresen’s BTC Faucet

Note his intentions for wanting to distribute the supply of BTC so others could somehow benefit or at the very least, take part in the network in some way.
How at this point it was easier to mine BTC than buy it
Also how someone in the comments admitted he felt bad for using the faucet (which distributed 5 BTC) so he made a donation of 50 back to it.
Gavin was one of the first developers that helped Bitcoin grow and this is just one of the more simple contributions towards that effort.

• First time someone realized the potentially massive wealth transfer could be taking place

The amount of foresight these individuals had to take part in this new kind of system either by mining or by purchasing Bitcoin (both options being far more difficult than what we experience today) without having any mainstream media personality or institutional investor or politician giving their signal of approval (or even interest) is really impressive.
Notice the price of BTC being thrown around, how the price of $10,000/BTC was their moonshot.
Also, whoever the teenager was who claimed to have 95 BTC, I hope he HODL’d, and still is!

• First reported major hack reported

Note the amount stolen and the way they got in. Also his methods of monitoring and suggestions made by those in the comments. We should all be this vigilant and more so of our own computers and vulnerabilities.

• The person who was able to buy over 250,000 BTC for just $0.0101.

He claims that he attempted to offer help and clarity. Mt. Gox ultimately decided to roll back those trades despite their clear disclaimer of not being a counterparty for trades occurring on the platform. This particular event happened about 2 years before the now infamous hack that tanked the price of Bitcoin, took down the most popular Bitcoin exchange of that time (At that time, Mt. Gox was handling over 70% of all BTC trades) and the reparations of that event are still needing to be distributed over 5 years later.

• Possibly First time Proof of Stake was proposed

Note the comments in this thread, the mentality of those wanting to figure out if this could be a solution and how it could possibly be implemented. The problems they needed solutions for this early on: in 2011 people and developers in the space were always aware that the Bitcoin network would need to find a scaling solution but finding one that didn’t compromise core beliefs like finding a fair incentive model for securing the network.
No personal attacks, just thoughts and creativity being shared among peers wanting to find a solution.

• Hal Finney’s self written summary of his BTC experiences

He hints to Satoshi’s possible identity, his outlook on BTC, how other cryptographers were quick to be skeptical, after so many failed attempts for digital money, but Hal chose to keep an open mind. With his health condition he was confident that BTC would prove to be a worthy investment to provide for his heirs in the future.

• First time HODL was unleashed to the world

Typed by drunken accident, still a very honest and funny post.

• Vitalik’s Post Introducing Ethereum

It’s interesting reading the reactions to the ICO and the requirement to invest in the coin rather than the ability to mine it straight away.
Already in 2014 there is a lot of skepticism surrounding new coins and the solutions they claim to represent. Fast forward another 5 years and we’re now dealing with a flood of scam coins and fake projects.