Featured Image Credit: Westend61/Getty Images
Topics: Bitcoin, Cryptocurrency, Money
Ellie Kemp
A man who bought one of the first physical forms of Bitcoin in 2012 is a hell of a lot richer now.
Cryptocurrency is certainly nothing new, but investing in Bitcoin back in its early days was certainly a gamble.
People have made billions by investing in the crypto, including someone who sat on a $7k investment for 14 years, yielding massive returns.
And now, a man by the fake name John Galt has made millions after holding onto a special Bitcoin bar for more than 13 years.
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At the time, he paid $500 for a Casascius gold bar that contained Bitcoin.
Casascius bars were one of the first ways to own 'physical' Bitcoin. Each bar has a hidden private key under a tamper-evident sticker. If you peel it off, you can move the Bitcoin into a digital wallet - which is what 'John' decided to do on May 13 this year.
Why then? Well, it's when Bitcoin’s price finally topped $100,000 per coin.
John decided to peel off the sticker and move the 100 BTC out of the bar.
At today’s prices, those 100 BTC are worth over $10 million - a gain of about 2,000,000%. So if he traded them in, he'd be in for the ultimate payday now.
"Now that it's worth over $10 million, I knew I couldn't keep just sitting on it. So yeah... even though I was kinda unsure, I finally redeemed it today," John wrote online of his decision to finally selling it on.
According to AI Invest, John loved the idea of holding unbroken physical Bitcoin, as it felt more valuable than 'just money.'
He'd previously tried to sell the bar in the past, but found it hard to trust buyers and get a fair price.
Casascius bars were created by entrepreneur Mike Caldwell in 2011, but production was stopped in 2013 when regulators stepped in and shut the operation down.
Since, the bars have become a sought-after collectors item.
Reacting to the story on Reddit, over in the R/Bitcoin community, one person wrote: "That’s insane but it’s a win win for him. $500 to $10M is a good flip."
"Haha bit better than a good flip. Man turned 1 car payment into a lifetime of luxury lol," a second weighed in.
"Legend. Personally I'd cash half of it out and let the rest ride to $50m," a third reckoned.
"It will difficult for him to top that trade," a fourth wrote.
One crypto fan did some deep diving and found John hadn't actually cashed out on his Bitcoin just yet.
"He distributed the 100 BTC between 9 new wallet addresses. Hasn't sold any of it yet," they revealed, adding a link to his mempool - a waiting area for unconfirmed cryptocurrency transactions.
Only once those 100 BTC leave the mempool and hit his wallet will John Galt’s six-figure gamble truly pay off - until then, it’s just numbers in transit.