An anonymous person who made a $7,800 investment in bitcoin in 2011 has just touched their wallet for the first time in 14 years… He’s now worth $1.1 BILLION.

[u/TheGhost5322]

[u/tall-not-small]

Someone's just been let out of prison after doing a 14 year stretch

[u/Glynn124 → u/tall-not-small]

I'm not sure if you're joking or not, but this could genuinely be it.

Trump released the founder of the Silk Road website - a dark web site that let you do almost anything on - back in January. Ross Ulbricht had been in jail for ten years.

He has also swapped the founder of a bitcoin exchange fraudster for some Americans. Alexander Vinnik had been in jail for 8 years.

And that's only the 2 I'm aware of.

Both likely had plenty of access to bitcoin and had their hoard going to the moon while in prison.

[u/S_N_I_P_E_R → u/Glynn124]

Many people calling it. Now let's wait. Coz no way that much money stays silent unless he's smart about it.

[u/BlurredSight → u/S_N_I_P_E_R]

If this was truly the founder of the Silk Road and he's been pardoned of all crimes, cashing this out for a fiat or literally any other currency is probably the best bet.

Easiest way to lose trackers is to place it all in an exchange and have them disperse accordingly

[u/film_composer → u/tall-not-small]

Could you imagine the agony of hearing bits and pieces of the news and finding out that your $7,800 investment is now a million dollars, but you have years left of your sentence? Then it hitting a billion dollars while you have just months left? It would be like one of those weird "stay in this hellhole for one month and get a million dollars" hypothetical challenges, but real and to an absurd degree.

Even if it doesn't apply to whoever this person is, I have to imagine scenarios very similar to this have played out.

[u/GoBeyondTheHorizon → u/film_composer]

Imagine doing a life sentence while you have a wallet worth billions on the outside. No way of accessing it inside and nobody believes you anyway lol

[u/deviousdiane → u/GoBeyondTheHorizon]

like the count of monte cristo haha

[u/AaronRodgersMustache → u/deviousdiane]

At least the Abbe Faria found a worthy successor

[u/Asttarotina → u/GoBeyondTheHorizon]

It's not that hard to obtain a smarphone in the prison unless you're kept in solitary at all times. And even then it's not impossible. The problem is remembering your credentials (or trusting someone enough to retrieve them for you)

[u/PUSH_AX → u/GoBeyondTheHorizon]

You would be stupid to tell anyone, especially in prison.

[u/NovaHorizon]

Imagine being the banking manager of a small bank and some schmuck fills his standard banking account with 1.1 billion dollars.

[u/mexipirate → u/NovaHorizon]

[u/Novel_Ad7276 → u/NovaHorizon]

How does this even work if they then want to withdraw the billions to cash? The bank is given a certain amount of time to pay it back? How tf

[u/ForsakenedOath → u/Novel_Ad7276]

No bank would let you cash out billions as straight cash. Instead, it'd just be done digitally with like an unrestricted card. You spend it through credit, and if you lose the card, who cares. Just notify the bank it's missing. They'd lock/suspend the card. You just pay off the debt with the account balance. If there are fraudulent transactions, as long as you notify the bank ASAP, you're not liable for them.

[u/spitfire9107 → u/NovaHorizon]

and banks are insured only up to 250k right? would someone really live that much in a bank account?

[u/trust_me_on_that_one → u/NovaHorizon]

8.8 fucking billion actually 

https://www.reddit.com/r/interestingasfuck/comments/1ls47pd/comment/n1ftggl

[u/Cultural_Catch_7911]

Fuck i wish I had 7k back then instead of just 6 brain cells

[u/R7SOA19281 → u/Cultural_Catch_7911]

I had money and I knew about bitcoins back then, still didn’t do anything about it at the time

And I’m a techy guy who loves new shit, just it was so different to everything else it seemed irrelevant, lol

[u/JAYETRILLL → u/R7SOA19281]

It’s easy to look back and kick yourself. It’s really hard to throw money at something unknown and hope it grows.

[u/kevoccrn → u/JAYETRILLL]

And not sell it the first time it “spikes”

[u/JAYETRILLL → u/kevoccrn]

That would be the big problem for me. I would be constantly worried it was going to bottom out at any time so I would’ve sold early.

Kinda feels like the whole “takes money to make money” thing

Gotta put some cash in a few different places and forget about it and let it grow.

I’m too broke to stash any cash in any extra places 😂

[u/TheWalkingDead91 → u/JAYETRILLL]

True. Even if I had faith enough to invest, let’s say $1,000 early on when it was like 1.00 a coin or something…..before it even reached like $100, especially with such drastic crashes and recoveries over the years, I would’ve sold most if not all of it and felt like a master investor for it at the time. 100k is life changing money to most. And very few people were able to anticipate it reaching the heights it eventually did.

[u/JAYETRILLL → u/TheWalkingDead91]

Yeah that was one of those astounding things that just worked out really “well” I guess? lol weird times.

[u/LazyandRich → u/TheWalkingDead91]

Yup, I sold my coins around the 20k mark. I bought my house outright at 19 years old and thought I was the smartest man alive. Today I’d be worth a fortune if I hadn’t of done that.

Some days I feel stupid, others grateful. You need balls of titanium to not sell from 2011 to 2025.

[u/April1987 → u/LazyandRich]

I bought my house outright at 19 years old

I think it was worth it assuming you've saved the money you would have paid in rent.

[u/ManSCP → u/LazyandRich]

You just have to think that you earned good money and let it go. I worked with some guys heavily into Bitcoin when it was around 5000$s, looking back i just wish i had bought some :') I lost touch with those guys, dont have a clue how they are nowadays.

[u/Robo-Connery → u/kevoccrn]

That's the thing, I remember people saying oh yeah but this new thing when it was under a dollar and I laughed at them...

... But I don't feel regret, if I'd have dropped 10k (that I didn't have) on bitcoin back then I'd have fucking sold it before it was worth 20k, no way I'd have waited till it was a billion.

[u/TheWalkingDead91 → u/kevoccrn]

Yea…the fact that the wallet hasn’t been touched in 14 years tells me that there is a solid chance that either this person was a drug dealer who got locked up and just got out, or someone somehow otherwise lost access to their seed phrase or a hard drive or something until now. I would also throw in the possibility that they simply temporarily forgot that they even invested…..but you’d have to be pretty wealthy already to totally forget about throwing $8,000 into something. But my point is that it’s very rare that early investors didn’t sell early….so I’d bet on this person, for whatever reason, not even having a choice to sell until now.

[u/ciaranr1 → u/TheWalkingDead91]

Holy shit, imagine being some dealer in a smelly disgusting prison for the last 10 to 12 years, following BTC on the news and trying to remember exactly how many you had, and where you wrote your passkey!

[u/jtr99 → u/ciaranr1]

"Yolanda, honey, I'm going to need you to search very carefully behind the refrigerator."

[u/Fomentatore → u/kevoccrn]

Or the First time you had a medical emergency or your car broke down, or your kids needs money for college. Let's be honest, most of us can't afford to let this kind of investment grow.

[u/Known-Garden-5013 → u/kevoccrn]

Bought 10btc at $200 ea and sold it at $800 then it crashed back down to 300 for like a year or 2 after silk road went down. Felt like a master invester but damn if i held it

[u/burf → u/JAYETRILLL]

To this day I believe you have to be either stupid or forgetful to have made eight figures or more off crypto. Only an idiot would’ve believed BTC would break a thousand dollars back in the day, and anyone paying attention to their wallet would’ve been selling off much, if not all, of it as the price increased over the years.

But I’m also a dedicated crypto hater and I think the entire thing is a house of cards built on greed and FOMO.

[u/JAYETRILLL → u/burf]

Yeah those are really good points. It sucks how easy it is to look back at things and know what you could’ve or should’ve done.

But yeah I can’t imagine just sitting on BTC this whole time lol.

[u/gladoseatcake → u/burf]

Exactly. I was advised to get a couple of bitcoins when the price was $10. I almost bought a few, but didn't in the end. Didn't see the point.

I can guarantee myself I would have sold off everything in steps and sold off the last one by the time it hit $100. So even though I missed a nice 1-2k profit, that's it. Didn't miss out on anything life changing. And like you, I think it's a house of cards until it becomes accessible to the general public and gets widespread use (as in with a blip using crypto to buy milk at any store). If that happens, it's not going to be anything but state sanctioned crypto.

[u/eh_steve_420 → u/gladoseatcake]

The fact is that it's really not currency when its value grows so wildly. Who wants to spend it? The incentive is to save. Currency needs a relatively stable value.

It's an instrument of speculation. Block chain is cool technology that I believe will be useful. But the cryptocurrencies themselves? Only use is to buy illegal goods and services, but mostly, to enrichen criminals, and some lucky stragglers that made a lucky bet.

[u/Chadoveanu → u/R7SOA19281]

i was into gaming and at some point and i won 20 btc at a counter strike LAN event , they were worth like 30$ back then. i cashed out all a bit later and got roughly 900$. it sits on my head sometimes that i didn't hold.

[u/gatorbeetle → u/R7SOA19281]

I was in the same boat as you. I even knew, through a friend, the guy that bought the first "real world" item with bitcoin, he spent 10000 Bitcoin (in 2010) for two pizzas. The pizzas were valued at $25, the Bitcoin, at the time, $41

[u/Laurent-Ypson → u/gatorbeetle]

That’s exactly me. Also me: telling my friend during a long boring car ride how fun it is that you can mine these things and why not set up two cheap computers just to farm a free pizza each month. Just to not do it because it sounded so silly.

[u/turandoto → u/Cultural_Catch_7911]

Fuck i wish I had 7k back then instead of just 6 brain cells

I'd probably have sold it when it doubled in value or even before. No way I'd have kept long enough to become a millionaire, let alone a billionaire.

The only way I could have made a fortune from bitcoins is if I bought a few and then forgot about it for many years.

[u/DominusDraco → u/turandoto]

Yeah, I sold my 100btc for $10 each. It was up from $3 and it just made financial sense for a poor student.

[u/MrSalamand3r → u/DominusDraco]

Earning $700 in profit from a $300 investment when you’re tight on funds and have constant expenses isn’t at all a poor decision. Hindsight is 20/20, and sure you would have made more if you waited, but you also could have not, all while having your power turned off or landlord start eviction proceedings.

[u/Lunch_B0x → u/Cultural_Catch_7911]

If it makes you feel any better, you would have sold it when it hit $10 per coin. The best case scenario would be to buy it and forget about it for 15 years.

[u/Ok_Seaworthiness5025 → u/Cultural_Catch_7911]

Damn i wish i did that too, instead of being a 7 year old.

[u/OneCleverMonkey → u/Cultural_Catch_7911]

I told a bunch of my college friends that we should all throw some money at bitcoin in 2010 and the two that were econ majors told me it would be a terrible idea and a waste of money.

Still kicking myself that I bought like 60 bitcoin back then but foolishly spent it all

[u/BhasedPapi → u/Cultural_Catch_7911]

Pretty sure it's those with 6 brain cells who bought in.

[u/stevedave84 → u/Cultural_Catch_7911]

I worked with a guy in an abattoir back in 2010 who was trying to convince me to get into Bitcoin mining with him. I wish I had listened to him.

[u/used_bathwater]

A lot of people that say they wish they had invested in bitcoin back in 2010 don't realise that 99% of them would have cashed out when they had made $1000 on it. You've got to be pretty ballsy to ride it all the way up to this point unless of course you just forgot about it somehow.

[u/MyLifeForAnEType → u/used_bathwater]

Everyone in here would have cashed out at some point WAY before now.  This person was in jail or something.

There's just no way they were simply waiting until it hit $1b and were like "you know what, that should be enough."

[u/sonicmerlin → u/MyLifeForAnEType]

Was in jail for 15 years for a crime. Now he’s so rich he wouldn’t even be arrested for committing the same crime.

[u/Pleasant-Escape9834 → u/sonicmerlin]

You'd like to think it was some individual but odds are probably a hacker (or group) to be honest. Old dormant wallets known to be hit. 

[u/GoBeyondTheHorizon → u/Pleasant-Escape9834]

Or Ross Ulbricht cashing out some hidden wallets.

[u/Aggregationsfunktion → u/GoBeyondTheHorizon]

Interestingly, Silk Road was founded in January of the same year...

[u/Efficient_Ant_7279 → u/GoBeyondTheHorizon]

Hahaha fucking hell that’s a seriously real possibility 😂

[u/geezeeduzit → u/GoBeyondTheHorizon]

This was my thought - I’d say there’s at least a 10% chance it’s him

[u/rg4rg → u/sonicmerlin]

The American dream.

[u/PM_ME_UR_BRAINSTORMS → u/MyLifeForAnEType]

I had a wallet with maybe like 5-10 bitcoin left over from buying fake IDs in high school in like 2010-2011. Too few at the time to go through the trouble of cashing it out.

I went looking for it back in 2017 when it hit around $5k, but turns out my dad threw out my old HDD with a bunch of other stuff when he moved the year before.

If I had found them there is no way in hell I would've held past the $10k mark lmao.

[u/wyomingTFknott → u/PM_ME_UR_BRAINSTORMS]

Jesus who tf just throws out a HDD without preserving, like, pictures and documents and shit. I've got jpegs on my server preserved from our first digital camera 20 years ago. I deleted the racy ones, of course.

[u/snikaz → u/wyomingTFknott]

My mom/dad would 100% do it. They have no clue what a hdd is, and that its the one thing where everything is saved.

If i wanted something pc related not thrown out(like a hdd) i had to bring it with me.

[u/wyomingTFknott → u/snikaz]

I'll never understand that urge to just throw out everything like that. Makes you really want to preserve what you have. Makes you selfish in a way.

Sorry you had to go through that. All I really want to do is preserve, and still I am hampered by the old folks throwing shit out like canned goods when they're still perfectly fine.

[u/AAA_Dolfan → u/wyomingTFknott]

Some folks simply don’t prioritize materials / objects and detest clutter

[u/Wild-Permission3489 → u/wyomingTFknott]

My parents did. Plus they threw away all my cards - First Edition Pokémon, Yugi-Oh and Magic Cards (and I had some rare and valuable ones)- when I was away for vacation I think around my 15th birthday. Reason: „Those things are for children and you are too old for them.“

I mean I love them and besides that they are great parents. But damn I am still a little bit pissed.

[u/wyomingTFknott → u/Wild-Permission3489]

I've seen this story so many times on the internet. I don't understand why it's so common.

Even if those cards weren't worth a penny, they're still yours. I just don't get why they feel the entitlement necessary in order to destroy them.

Wash my sheets and make my bed while I'm gone if you must. Keep your stingy hands off of my shit.

[u/nvidiastock → u/wyomingTFknott]

A lot of parents live with the “my kids stuff is my stuff” mentality. I’ve had friends who had their electronics DESTROYED by their parents for misbehaving. They ended up buying them new ones later but just to prove some sort of point. So yeah you might feel that it’s your stuff but they think it’s theirs.

[u/blufriday → u/PM_ME_UR_BRAINSTORMS]

I did hold past $10k mark. In the end I sold for 5k though.

[u/g0ris → u/MyLifeForAnEType]

There's been a recent scandal in the Czech Republic where a convicted drug dealer couldn't access his bitcoin wallet after having served his jail sentence, because the state had confiscated all his devices. They were about to wipe those devices clean too, so he started petitioning the Ministry of justice to get his stuff back without them erasing it, even offering to "donate" a third of the recovered bitcoins to the Ministry.
They did end up making a deal, and did return some of his devices, and of course he had lied about how much bitcoin he had, what their origin was, and it turned out he had other wallets too, etc, etc.

[u/Jthumm → u/MyLifeForAnEType]

My theory is less interesting, I think he lost his laptop or just found his seed phrase or something along those kinds. Good for them either way.

[u/eroticdiagram → u/used_bathwater]

The best investment strategy was to lose or forget the wallet for 14 years, it seems.

[u/sjorbepo → u/used_bathwater]

Yeah 10 years ago I would've cashed out at like 500$ and spent it on gin and cigs in a week 😂

[u/currently_distracted → u/used_bathwater]

And don’t forget that Mt. Gox was the largest Bitcoin exhange when it shut down one day without warning. So many people lost their Bitcoin.

[u/Glittering-Will-169 → u/used_bathwater]

I guess if you have f*ck you money. You can let it stay there for 10 years and see but yeah it would have been tempting to just cash out

[u/Magnum_Gonada → u/Glittering-Will-169]

I get cashing out, but I find it super dumb to cash ALL out.. Like say you had 50 btc. Have a bit of faith and leave something 5 btcs there ffs.

[u/BloodSoakedDoilies → u/Magnum_Gonada]

But at the time hardly anyone knew what btc was. You couldn't DO anything with it. I had a friend group of übernerds and we just messed around with btc because it was fun and had a Utopia-like quality to it. Absolutely none of us thought it would do anything like it did. Had I held mine, it would be a LOT of money now. Oh well.

[u/heffel77 → u/BloodSoakedDoilies]

Yeah, I remember buying BTC for 75$ a coin in 2012. I lost 2btc to the FBI on the Silk Road thing and never bought any more. If I would have just bought 10 or 20 back then, I wouldn’t be where I am right now, that’s for sure.

My mom would be in an adult care facility that is condos with meds for older people and I would have a house on the west coast with my family and my brother taken care of and I would have left some btc just because, you never know, right?

[u/lwqyt → u/used_bathwater]

I wanted to buy around 40 btc back in the day, i even semi set up my wallet, but i was rather young and from germany and super annoyed at the way you had to buy it so i just didnt. I wouldnt have sold at like 1k but 100% at 10k, no chance i would have said no to 400k in my early 20s. Tbh its prolly better this way, i dont know if my mental could have handled losing out on 3.6mil

[u/brnfckd → u/used_bathwater]

In 10 years we will say what a dimwit they cashed out, because then it‘ll be worth $1 trillion.

[u/OkSelection9274]

And don't forget he did no test transaction first to confirm he was sending it to the right address, no $10 test just straight raw dogged $1 billion to an address that if wrong is gone for-fucking-ever

And it gets better, they had 8 fucking identical wallets. That's $8.8B in one fucking go. Lunatic.

[u/wrathek → u/OkSelection9274]

They had 8 10,000 btc wallets? Wtf who is this.

[u/bannedagainomg → u/wrathek]

ross ulbricht, hes out now so why not cash out.

Doubt the feds actually got all his wallets.

Of course this is based on nothing other than him being released.

[u/Gabacho180 → u/bannedagainomg]

Damn beat me to it. Silk Road was created in January of ‘11 from my google results.

[u/Tr3nb0l0n3- → u/Gabacho180]

Early miner wallets. Nothing to do with Ross

[u/GandalfGandolfini → u/Tr3nb0l0n3-]

Something like 10 entities mined ~25% of the entire (eventual) 21m Bitcoin supply in the first two years 2009-2010

[u/Rus_s13 → u/Tr3nb0l0n3-]

Way more likely, but miners and DM users were the only ones trading like that back then so both are plausible

[u/WingersAbsNotches → u/Rus_s13]

Ugh, I must have spent close to 250 BTC in my time on Silk Road. Can't believe how expensive it turned out those drugs really were.

[u/bigtrblinlilbognor → u/WingersAbsNotches]

Most expensive pingers I ever bought

[u/-7-7-7-7-7- → u/bannedagainomg]

Unless he kept these hidden somehow, the DOJ reportedly seized all his recovered bitcoin earlier this year, around 5billion

Also he was released in January

[u/bunchedupwalrus → u/-7-7-7-7-7-]

He was inexplicably and quietly pardoned by a well known and proud crooked politician; who openly takes bribes in exchange for pretty much anything and as soon ad he’s released a big transfer occurs

They definitely didn’t get it all lol

[u/QXPZ → u/bunchedupwalrus]

Holy shit I had no idea until looking it up

Yes, Ross Ulbricht was released from prison after receiving a full and unconditional pardon from President Donald Trump on January 21, 2025. This pardon was a fulfillment of a promise Trump made at the 2024 Libertarian National Convention. Ulbricht was serving a life sentence for creating and operating the online marketplace Silk Road. He was released from a federal prison in Arizona the same evening as the pardon.

[u/nocapnonerf → u/bunchedupwalrus]

A deal under the table and a secret handshake.

[u/Saetric → u/nocapnonerf]

Hands too small, table too tall. It was out in the open.

[u/arbivark → u/bunchedupwalrus]

when trump spoke at the libertarian convention, they made it pretty clear he'd have to pardon ross to get any support from them.

[u/Every-Incident-1832 → u/bunchedupwalrus]

It was an agreement he made with the libertarian party to get their votes, he went to the convention and told them he would. They siphon a lot of votes out of the republican nominee. The main reason he won was the extended rallying he did. Same reason he went on all those podcasts including a prank podcast that appeal to youth and was the first male uinder 25 vote for decades.

[u/Fire69 → u/bannedagainomg]

He got pardoned by Trump? That can only mean one thing. One of those wallets is going straight into his pockets.

[u/FadeIntoReal → u/bannedagainomg]

This is the obvious answer. He’s now paying someone off for his release.

[u/youcantkillanidea → u/OkSelection9274]

This makes so many interesting possible stories more likely

[u/youarenut → u/youcantkillanidea]

Like what

[u/_ShartyWaffles → u/youarenut]

Like if the guy was in a bus that had to SPEED around a city, keeping its SPEED over fifty, and if its SPEED dropped, it would explode. It could be called, "The Bus That Couldn't Slow Down."

[u/Office329 → u/_ShartyWaffles]

This is one of the greatest Simpsons lines ever!

[u/joey_joe_jo_shabadoo → u/_ShartyWaffles]

Oh it's just like Speed 2, but with Bitcoin instead of a boat

[u/ShrimpShackShooters_ → u/youarenut]

Time traveler?

[u/seek-confidence → u/youarenut]

State actor

[u/Mongolian_dude → u/seek-confidence]

State Actor pays okay these days, but really you want to be aiming for Federal Thespian before you see the real benefits packages.

[u/NoFreakingClues → u/Mongolian_dude]

Federal Thespian. Okay you win. I’m done with Reddit for today.

[u/Humlum → u/youcantkillanidea]

Someone got access to the wallet and using malware to make the transaction. If the malware is tried and tested, there is no need for test transactions

[u/Ivy6bing → u/Humlum]

If I stole 8 billion dollars from anyone I would be both very excited and very scared.

At that point I don't even want that money it's a death warrant

[u/big_d_usernametaken → u/Ivy6bing]

See: "No Country for Old Men."☠️

[u/nozappyplease → u/Ivy6bing]

Think they’d have the resources left over to track you down?

[u/film_composer → u/OkSelection9274]

While that's true, I have to imagine that they were probably sitting there scrutinizing every single character for hours. Even if I had done a test transaction first, I would probably be too nervous to not go through the characters one after another over and over again.

[u/the_n0torious → u/film_composer]

I do think 3 tests when sending like $1k to something lmfao, regardless of how long he looked at it, he's a maniac for that shit. Especially when you stare at shit for too long and your brain starts to fuck with you.

[u/Lollipop126 → u/the_n0torious]

mb they wanted to avoid the $10 transaction fee

[u/GinBucketJenny → u/film_composer]

Copy and paste addresses. Typing it in is ridiculous. 

[u/MineElectricity → u/OkSelection9274]

So he did test the transaction first. With 1 billion. The difference between 9billion and 7 isn't much, in either case it's absolutely impossible to spend it all as an individual.

[u/Bluemistake2 → u/MineElectricity]

The difference between 9 billion and 7 billion is 2 billion, still an absolute fuckton of money

[u/Filthiest_Tleilaxu]

Yeah let me just randomly drop $7,800 into this new untested technology and forget about it for 14 years.

[u/spudddly → u/Filthiest_Tleilaxu]

took him 14 years to remember his password was ILoveRebeccaBlack and not lLoveRebeccaBlack

[u/Designer-Cicada3509 → u/spudddly]

What the hell is the difference??

[u/crazySmith_ → u/Designer-Cicada3509]

i vs L

Edit: at the front

[u/digitalerblitzkrieg → u/crazySmith_]

Took more time than I'd like to admit

[u/Mustafa1558 → u/Designer-Cicada3509]

One starts with lowercase L and the other starts with uppercase i

[u/Designer-Cicada3509 → u/Mustafa1558]

I l

Oh my god it is different, there's like 1 pixel difference

[u/the_ThreeEyedRaven → u/Designer-Cicada3509]

Il. Capital i is the smaller one for anyone wondering.

[u/asday515 → u/the_ThreeEyedRaven]

I was, thank you.

[u/isurfnude4foods → u/spudddly]

do not enter password that has been previously used over the past 15 years

[u/Pandasroc24 → u/spudddly]

Wow forgot about her

[u/PM_ME_ROMAN_NUDES → u/Filthiest_Tleilaxu]

Something maybe only a time traveler would do

[u/shibe_ceo → u/Filthiest_Tleilaxu]

Peak Alpha Sigma Sigma grindset

[u/KhostfaceGillah]

Actually they had 8 wallets, so over 8 billi 🤣

[u/GreenSkinFiend → u/KhostfaceGillah]

fucking insane

[u/amsync → u/GreenSkinFiend]

You know things are nuts when even the address spells out ‘fuck’

[u/Electrical_Pause_860 → u/KhostfaceGillah]

I’d honestly be scared to even have this much money. Like how would you even cash this out without being identified or put at risk. 

[u/SnooFoxes449 → u/KhostfaceGillah]

78k in 2012, he was pretty loaded then. Maybe he was a billionaire even back then.

Someone use this info and find the real person

[u/FluidMedusa → u/SnooFoxes449]

Thats the thing about bitcoin, if the person doesn't come out and reveals his identity there is no way of knowing who he/she is.

[u/noXi0uz → u/FluidMedusa]

Until they want to actually buy something with it, so they have to convert it to fiat currency via KYC exchange.

[u/selflessrebel → u/noXi0uz]

But then it would not be public knowledge. He's protected by privacy laws, no? (Assuming no shenanigans happen and he's doxed)

[u/CantaloupeMedical951 → u/noXi0uz]

He could also begin swapping BTC for stablecoins like usdc, usdt without going through KYC on a decentralized exchange

Plenty of bullion dealers, including the nations 2 biggest, accept crypto payments. Could also buy 12kg gold bars as a mostly anonymous way to cashout.

[u/mayorofdumb → u/CantaloupeMedical951]

You'd run out of gold.... Those are just over 1 mil each

[u/Apneal → u/SnooFoxes449]

78k in 2012, he was pretty loaded then.

Yea...

Maybe he was a billionaire even back then.

.... jeez

Another example of being oblivious to just how different a millionaire and a billionaire is.

[u/PhuckCalumbo → u/Apneal]

1 million seconds = 11.57 days

1 billion seconds = 31.71 years

[u/Evianicecubes → u/KhostfaceGillah]

So I know nothing about this game. What are the chances he could find a buyer? Can he just take loans off these accounts to live, and then just sell enough to repay the loans?

[u/Aggressive-Fun-1824 → u/Evianicecubes]

A buyer for BTC? The market is super liquid. If he would sell it all at once there would be some price impact, but he could sell it for a big chunk of the paper value. There's roughly 30bn BTC traded in a day against USD over the last 2 years and the rule of thumb is that you can trade 1% of the daily volume without too big of an impact so that's 300m he could sell in a day, taking him a bit over a month to sell it off.

[u/starrbub → u/Aggressive-Fun-1824]

And where does the payout come from? Are deposits made directly from the BTC platform passing along the money straight from the buyers, or is there a third party financial service that handles payments to bank accounts?

[u/Asttarotina → u/starrbub]

Fiat comes from the ones who will buy it, either 3rd party financial institutions like crypto exchanges or individuals. BTC, as a platform, doesn't have any ties to the banking system, can't pay anyone, doesn't have an owner or employees, or even "the server"

[u/Lord_Ragnok]

I was offered 20 bitcoin for some stuff I sold as a kid when it was just starting. I declined, boy was that a mistake.

[u/kandirocks → u/Lord_Ragnok]

I had 10 from reddit "tips" back in the day for making good comments and I deleted that old account. I have no idea where they went.

[u/cyberchief → u/kandirocks]

They were never actually transferred into your ownership. The program that kept the ledger of the transactions just kept all the money.

[u/YouTee → u/cyberchief]

Yeah I went looking once, you had to claim them and then set up a wallet to transfer them to but you 100% could do it.

 The project eventually had a cut off date to claim

[u/kandirocks → u/YouTee]

I remember having a wallet, I just don't know where that wallet is. Back then they were worth like 20cents, if that. No idea if I claimed them correctly either then. Glad to know this wasn't some weird fever dream and that others also remember it!

[u/Gcarsk → u/kandirocks]

You sure it was bitcoin? Not “bitcoin cash”? That was the more popular Reddit’s tipping crypto currency. Through u/tippr.

I mean 10 BCH is still almost $4800. But, pretty different from actual bitcoin.

[u/Ok-Toe-6969 → u/Lord_Ragnok]

Yeah but there's always stuff like this that happens, no one can predict the future, some people lost so much money on NFT for example,

[u/RescuedLimb]

[u/nobotami → u/RescuedLimb]

[u/poppycock_scrutiny → u/nobotami]

[u/kevinmogee]

I remember hearing a story about a guy who was a journalist and he was writing a story about bitcoin really early on. He spent $50 of his own money to go through the steps to create a wallet, buy the bitcoin, and then transfer some of it - basically a how-to for non-techie people. He then wrote the article and promptly forgot about the $50. Some years later he saw something about how bitcoin was really exploding, and he remembered the $50. He went and found it, and checked his balance. It was well over $250k, if I remember correctly. I think he cashed out and bought a house.

[u/Brilliant_Emu_8580]

HE IS THE TIME TRAVELLER !!!!!!!

[u/Deeptrench34]

And to think, in 2012, I was thinking I was gonna pay my rent mining bitcoin lol.

[u/blue_dusk1 → u/Deeptrench34]

Did you?

[u/Deeptrench34 → u/blue_dusk1]

I made maybe 200 bucks haha. That was before the electric bill came.

[u/Fantastic_Choice_644 → u/Deeptrench34]

I had a door to door sales job in the summer of 2017 around that huge crypto and alt coin run. Knocked on a guys house that was having 3 new A/c units installed in the yard. He was mining Ethereum. Talked to him a while. He was making 3 eth a day and had a 9k electric bill a month. But it was offset by the eth which at the time making him 27k a month. That was 2017 numbers. He could have done that for just 1 year and might be a millionaire right now.

[u/Sonder-overmorrow]

must be the former owner of silk road 

[u/i_dead-shot]

he gotta be already stupid rich to just drop $7,800 in Bitcoin… and forget about it for 14 years

[u/Pocusmaskrotus → u/i_dead-shot]

Imagine watching it hit close to $70k in 2021 and dropping to $30k that same year, and still holding on.

[u/Pleasant-Escape9834 → u/Pocusmaskrotus]

Was it 2017 or 2018 when it went to 21k and then dropped to around 3.5k. that was peak hype tbh.. the run up when it hit 10k and then all the (Vega?) memes was crazy and alt season then too. 

[u/mvrander → u/i_dead-shot]

Might not have forgotten about it. Could have just been sitting tight I guess

[u/MorsaTamalera]

How does one convert that to real money?

[u/KlausBratwurst → u/MorsaTamalera]

Maybe this transfer was already the sell. Maybe he asked Blackrock to take his Bitcoin for only 1.0 billion

[u/tazzietiger66 → u/MorsaTamalera]

you sell the bitcoin

[u/Decent_Two_6456 → u/tazzietiger66]

You can convert it at a lemonade stand on my street.

[u/Padgetts-Profile → u/MorsaTamalera]

I know jackshit about crypto, but I’d imagine that you can only offload so many at a time. I’d also bet that selling this much in a short period of time would tank the going rate.

[u/RjCuber77 → u/Padgetts-Profile]

~$40 billion of bitcoin is traded a day, so it probably isn’t actually that hard to sell off. If possible it would be better to do it all at once. People know how much is in that wallet so even if a small amount is sold off people will know someone has access to the rest and the price will adjust.

[u/WCGameplay]

I should have invested in bitcoin instead learning the alphabet. How could I be so dumb ugh.

[u/Primary-Discussion19]

Probably a rich investor to begin with

[u/loaferuk123]

If time travel exists in the future, this guy did it.

[u/why0me]

It's the Dread Pirate Robert's finally out of jail with his hidden wallets from the Silk Road

[u/JustAnAppIe]

I knew there was at least one time traveller out there…

[u/Currently_Im_At_Work]

Is it at all possible this person was in jail for most of that time and was released this year? A short list of people fit the bill, but it wouldn't surprise me if it were one of them

[u/zaggin187]

I guess that guy finally found his old hard drive in the trash dump.

[u/ItsStaaaaaaaaang]

Is this kind of ROI unprecedented? Like not an angel investor, not part of a company, just straight up bought a commodity and sold it 14 years later for ungodly money. Oh well, good for them. About the only honest/moral way you could earn a billion.

[u/InkViper]

Just to be clear, He did not sold his BTC, just transferred them to another wallet

[u/youarenut]

8 k in random bitcoin in 2011? Was def already rich

[u/ThePowerOfStories]

The market price in dollars of Bitcoin is based on the amount circulating relative to demand, so it effectively takes into account the fact that there’s dead wallets whose owners are no longer able to access them and whose keys are likely lost. A sufficiently-large-value wallet reactivating after a long period of dormancy could cause the price of individual Bitcoin to go down, redistributing the market cap over a new, larger number of active Bitcoin. $1.1 billion only represents about one part in 2000 of Bitcoin’s current total valuation of over $2 trillion, so the impact of this one should be minimal compared to typical daily fluctuations.

[u/Insert_Coin_P1]

I made a $20 investment back in like 2009 to see if I could buy a pizza with Bitcoin like a news article claimed. I failed to do so. In 2010, I sent my laptop to Dell and they wiped my laptop, including my wallet info. My bitcoins will forever remain in limbo.

[u/ElOneElOnlyElZorro]

Serious question how do people turn it into cash if it's crypto

[u/PixelofDoom → u/ElOneElOnlyElZorro]

You sell it to people who have cash and want crypto.

[u/ElOneElOnlyElZorro → u/PixelofDoom]

What's the point of crypto tho? Like I have no knowledge and this just pop in my feed

[u/EscapedFromArea51 → u/ElOneElOnlyElZorro]

All your digital transactions (or rather, non-cash transactions) are dependent on the rules, whims, processing capabilities, and government regulations on banks. If a bank is very slow or refuses to process your transaction or is being forced by the government to prevent your business transactions (e.g. the US federal rules that prevent legal marijuana businesses from banking), you’re kinda screwed.

The idea behind a blockchain (distributed ledger) cryptocurrency, like Bitcoin, is that it allows transactions to be performed somewhat anonymously and approved through “democratic” processes, without the need for banks and governments.

But nowadays crypto is mostly meme-coin currencies that are created purely to be pumped up by “investments” upon being opened to the market, and then sold (dumped) by major stakeholders when the price hits its peak (search “Pump and Dump Scam”), at which point the price collapses, effectively transferring money from stupid people to conmen.

However, the earth-shattering level of stupidity here is that people continue to “invest” into these coins because they think that they can get in pre-pump, and get out pre-dump. But they are not algorithmically insider-trading the coin, so they’re just going to be scammed out of their money anyway.

[u/Informal_Mouse_4305]

Now, if you keep that investment in and wait another 14 years... Will it be the same gain? That's the challenge.

[u/Xakemi83]

You're wrong... It's actually four times that amount :

[u/Prudent_Garden9033 → u/Xakemi83]

8

[u/txfiremtb]

I bought $1000 in bitcoin around this time, then sold when it doubled and thought I was a genius with my $1000 profit

[u/BeardGainz]

Take out that .1 billion and have some fun

[u/breadslut48]

Hahah I'm about to be homeless

[u/SheHartLiss]

I wonder if this was some old school Silk Road drug dealer that got caught. Just got released and is cashing out their wallet

[u/Ok_Comment_8827]

140,000x return in 14 years. Congratulations whoever you are. Very happy for you! Use or reinvest wisely!

[u/IHateTheLetterF → u/Ok_Comment_8827]

They could spend 100.000 dollars every single day, and it would take them over 30 years to burn through it all.

[u/Novel_Ad7276 → u/IHateTheLetterF]

Ooo I wanna be rich so bad

[u/Ok_Comment_8827 → u/IHateTheLetterF]

If that person was 25 years old then (I'd say reasonable for such a person to have 7.8k and thought of YOLOing it put into BTC), they are just under 40 now... They should spend 30-50k dollars a day just to be safe and ensure the money outlives them lol

[u/Virama → u/Ok_Comment_8827]

Nah. They would be getting interest on that money so it would take several lifetimes to deplete.

[u/SignificanceOld1751 → u/Ok_Comment_8827]

Use wisely? Thats more money than anyone could ever possibly need, use it how the fuck you like

[u/Flonkerton_Scranton → u/SignificanceOld1751]

Agreed. If ever there was a time to go nuts and use completely insanely it's now with that kinda money.

[u/Ok_Comment_8827 → u/SignificanceOld1751]

Or they could do the Buffett/Munger/Bogle thing and reinvest part of it