A Norwegian man who bought £15 worth of bitcoins for a thesis on encryption has discovered his collection is now worth £584,000.
Purchased in 2009 for 150 kroner, the 5,000 bitcoins were all but forgotten about until recently.
Their owner Kristoffer Koch, from Oslo, was reminded by all the
negative press surrounding bitcoins and wondered how his were getting
on.
As bitcoins are stored in encrypted wallets secured with a private
key, he had to work out the password – and once Koch got into his wallet
he was stunned at how much he had to play with.
‘It said I had 5,000 bitcoins in there. Measuring that in today’s rates it’s about £600,000,’ he said.
Koch exchanged a fifth of his 5,000 bitcoins to help buy an apartment in Toyen, one of the Norwegian capital’s wealthier areas.
His partner was originally skeptical about bitcoins but has since changed her view of the bizarre currency.
‘She thinks I spend money on a bunch of crap. I buy a lot of
technical little things that I never have time to use, and this was the
worst of all, the fact that I was buying fake money,’ Mr Koch said.
Now she reckons her boyfriend ‘should be allowed to buy the things’
he wants. But she might not be saying that if the value of the
coin suddenly plummets as it did in 2013 after online black market Silk Road was shut down.
You can now spend bitcoins themselves in British venues including
a pub in Hackney, and there is an bitcoin ATM in Canada which functions by scanning your hand.
If you want to get your mitts on some bitcoins, you can buy them on
an online exchange or you can ‘mine’ them which means solving a very
complex equation on a computer.
After four years of bitcoins, there are about 11 million in
existence. The number of bitcoins that can ever be mined will be
exhausted at 21 million.
One bitcoin is worth £276.09 at the time of writing.
iCryptocurrency Says "
Make Money. $100 Life Changer"
Support our broadcast. We appreciate your donations and helping hands.
Bitcoin >> 138QHKzao2ZKcbbVzDVruMww6ZmBBsp2BN
Ether >> 0xDbf14A559b99E2E7b0b6bd2D92Ea5a3a691f4694
No comments: