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Man Forgets About Buying $27 of Bitcoin, Is Now Worth About


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http://gizmodo.com/man-forgets-about-buying-27-of-bitcoin-is-now-worth-a-1454150399

 

Man Forgets About Buying $27 of Bitcoin, Is Now Worth About $1 Million

Four years ago, Oslo-man Christopher Koch's girlfriend scoffed at his purchase of $27-worth of Bitcoin. Chances are she was singing a decidedly different tune last April, when Koch checked back in on his investment and found out it was worth $886,000. And over a cool million today.

Back in 2009, Koch was working on a thesis paper about encryption, which introduced him to the relatively unknown world of Bitcoin. On little more than a whim, he decided to throw down $27 for 5,000 Bitcoins because the encryption process fascinated him and because why not. Koch then promptly forgot about the purchase—until Bitcoin started popping up in the news four years later, that is.

Remembering his offhand investment, Koch frantically searched for the password to his wallet and was floored to find that, by last April's standards, he was sitting on an $886,000 nest egg. After trading in just one-fifth of his total purchase, he was able to buy himself an apartment in Toyen, one of the wealthiest areas in Oslo.

Of course, Bitcoin is also notorious for occasionally erratic fluctuations in value, the most recent example being the seizure of Silk Road earlier in the month, which saw the price fall to $30 before skyrocketing again to $197. By today's standards, though, Koch's $27 investment of 5,000 Bitcoins is worth a total of $1,010,000. Not bad for a broke student with zero investment experience. [NRK via The Guardian]

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I can attest to this.

Couple of friends got into it quite earlier.

Although they didnt make millions , or hundreds of thousands.

One made 5 digit amount for basically doing nothing so we were discussing what cigars and stuff to buy with his profit.

 

Interesting but not my kind of game.

Edited by Throttle2
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Extremely volatile. Value plummeted after Silk Road seizure, but (surprisingly) recovered strongly. That means that many people still value it intrinsically, despite the forced closure of the largest illegal operation that used BTC almost exclusively.

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Published November 02, 2013
From Utah to Singapore - one couple's Bitcoin odyssey
BT_20131102_JHBITCOIN2_821297.jpg

BITCOINERS
Austin and Beccy in Singapore. She told BT: 'We've had people ask us, "You've cheated, right?" But we haven't cheated at all.' - PHOTO: YEN MENG JIIN

NEWLYWEDS Austin Craig and Beccy Bingham-Craig are sitting in a Wendy's outlet on Lavender Street, a long way from home in Provo, Utah. In the last three months, the travelling American couple have not directly spent a single red, government-backed cent to get here: they have paid for everything in Bitcoin, the virtual currency used by a few and understood by even fewer.

Yesterday, in this corner of Singapore, the pair ended the final and 102nd day of their experiment called Life on Bitcoin, after having made pit stops in Berlin and Stockholm to meet fellow Bitcoiners.

In an interview on Thursday, Beccy told BT: "We've had people ask us, 'You've cheated, right?' But we haven't cheated at all."

The couple's experiment with Bitcoin - to be turned eventually into a documentary - started the day they returned to Utah from their honeymoon. To kick off the project, Beccy, who works with a data centre, converted her salary into Bitcoin. The couple paid their landlord in it. He took some persuading to accept this currency which is sent through the Internet - but not before taking a 10 per cent premium for his pains.

In their hometown, the couple persuaded a family-owned grocery store to take Bitcoin. To pay for petrol, they found a kindred Bitcoin spirit, an employee at a petrol station known to them only as Furb. They had to drive 80km from their home for the petrol though.

Then came the time to start their travel. In the last three weeks, the couple have driven cross-country to New York City, from where they visited Stockholm, Berlin and then Singapore.

Austin said: "I was curious about how to become involved in Bitcoin because neither of us is a cryptographer, programmer or an economist. As a concept, Bitcoin is really interesting."

Their trip has been equal parts madcap and careful planning. Their flights and hotel accommodation were arranged though Simply Travel, an online travel agency that accepts Bitcoin.

But getting a meal in Stockholm proved challenging. They wandered the streets ravenous late at night, in search of a restaurant that would accept Bitcoin. At a Burger King outlet, they found their US-issued gift card - paid for with Bitcoin - useless.

Beccy said of the Burger King staff: "They were like, 'We don't even have a way to accept this'. We looked crazy."

Since arriving in Singapore last Sunday, they have eaten at two cafes that accept Bitcoin. One of them, Artistry Cafe, has been doing so since July.

Where a direct Bitcoin transaction with a merchant is not possible, the couple rely on a fraternity of Bitcoin enthusiasts. In Singapore, a Bitcoiner helped them buy a local prepaid data plan for their cellphone in the conventional way, and accepted compensation in Bitcoin.

The couple's first Bitcoin transaction took place at a train station as they tried to get home from Salt Lake City's airport, post-honeymoon.

Austin said: "The first people we talked to had never heard of Bitcoin before, but we explained it to them.

"They said 'OK', and bought the train tickets, which we then bought from them with Bitcoin."

The experiment has been expensive: For the train tickets that cost US$18 in total, the couple parted with a physical Bitcoin - called a Casascius coin - worth US$45 then. Thanks to the rapid rise of Bitcoin's value, that coin is now worth about US$100.

The appreciation in Bitcoin's value that caused the couple to inadvertently enrich people in their wake made headlines in Norway recently. In 2009, engineer Kristoffer Koch bought US$24 in Bitcoin and promptly forgot about them. Four years later, that stash of Bitcoin rose to nearly US$886,000 in value, enabling him to buy an apartment in a swanky part of Oslo.

The cryptocurrency is approaching a full circle of sorts. It is now also available in physical coin and paper form, which contain "private keys" that give access to their digital value.

For all the pockets of euphoria about Bitcoin, the currency's value has a vexing tendency to plunge as suddenly as it spikes. In April, the price of a Bitcoin fell 70 per cent to US$70. Since then, the price has regained dizzying heights, trading at US$213 yesterday.

Compounding the volatility, Mt.Gox - the world's largest Bitcoin exchange - has earned the unwelcome attention of the authorities, becoming the subject of several raids. At last count, more than US$5 million has reportedly been seized from Mt.Gox accounts by the US government.

Little wonder then, that in the button-down world of bottom lines and shareholders, large corporations have backed away carefully from the Bitcoin concept.

Austin and Beccy found that for their project, buying a cellphone directly with Bitcoin was impossible. Austin said: "If a company is large . . . they say, 'We'll need to address that to corporate headquarters and that can take weeks or months or years if we can even get the conversation going'."

Even smaller businesses keep one wary eye on the vagaries of the Bitcoin world. Prashant Somosundram, owner of Artistry Cafe, puts a per-head cap on bills settled with Bitcoin. He told BT: "I'm quite conscious that this is still very nascent and any small technical issues could wipe out everything."

Even so, the going is good for now. In the last four months, 50 Bitcoin transactions have taken place at his cafe, which has seen the currency appreciate in value by 50 per cent.

Despite the uphill battle that Bitcoin faces, the converted have grown more fervent, drawn to its decentralised nature and the fact that it is impossible to counterfeit and is relatively free of transaction fees.

Austin said: "After all the difficulties we've been through, I'm still very much a believer."

Some time after the BT interview, a minor triumph was scored in Little India, where the couple convinced a henna tattoo artist to take Bitcoin as payment. "Beccy is the happy new owner of a henna-tattooed arm," Austin told BT in an email update.

Somewhere in Little India sits a mildly bemused owner of what might just be a piece of the future.

 

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http://gizmodo.com/man-forgets-about-buying-27-of-bitcoin-is-now-worth-a-1454150399

 

Man Forgets About Buying $27 of Bitcoin, Is Now Worth About $1 Million

 

1

Four years ago, Oslo-man Christopher Koch's girlfriend scoffed at his purchase of $27-worth of Bitcoin. Chances are she was singing a decidedly different tune last April, when Koch checked back in on his investment and found out it was worth $886,000. And over a cool million today.

Back in 2009, Koch was working on a thesis paper about encryption, which introduced him to the relatively unknown world of Bitcoin. On little more than a whim, he decided to throw down $27 for 5,000 Bitcoins because the encryption process fascinated him and because why not. Koch then promptly forgot about the purchaseuntil Bitcoin started popping up in the news four years later, that is.

Remembering his offhand investment, Koch frantically searched for the password to his wallet and was floored to find that, by last April's standards, he was sitting on an $886,000 nest egg. After trading in just one-fifth of his total purchase, he was able to buy himself an apartment in Toyen, one of the wealthiest areas in Oslo.

Of course, Bitcoin is also notorious for occasionally erratic fluctuations in value, the most recent example being the seizure of Silk Road earlier in the month, which saw the price fall to $30 before skyrocketing again to $197. By today's standards, though, Koch's $27 investment of 5,000 Bitcoins is worth a total of $1,010,000. Not bad for a broke student with zero investment experience. [NRK via The Guardian]

I think the important thing to note is that he could buy an apartment in the good part of Oslo with just a fifth or less than $200k. Whether thats just the downpayment or otherwise, its still cool.

Maybe property companies should be selling Oslo apartments to Singaporeans

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I think the important thing to note is that he could buy an apartment in the good part of Oslo with just a fifth or less than $200k. Whether thats just the downpayment or otherwise, its still cool.

Maybe property companies should be selling Oslo apartments to Singaporeans

 

 

But 1st got to know its Tax system.

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Neutral Newbie

Extremely volatile. Value plummeted after Silk Road seizure, but (surprisingly) recovered strongly. That means that many people still value it intrinsically, despite the forced closure of the largest illegal operation that used BTC almost exclusively.

Mann i hope another seizure happens soon for the value of BTC to drop drastically so that I can enter it hahaha. Have been trying to learn about BTC recently as it's still rising in popularity with all the news, information and guides springing up on the net haha~

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There was a time when people thought Dutch tulip bulbs were an awesome investment.

 

Fools rush in where angels fear to tread.

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Supersonic

Nvidia gets the best benefits from the Bitcoins, stable price for graphic cards  [smash]

 

You can't mine bitcoins with graphic cards.

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Supersonic
(edited)

This is how people mine Bitcoins

 

Please read check which year the article where you got the photo from was published, the date of the photo and also check the actual content of the article where it states that it isn't economical to mine bitcoin with GPUs.

 

Don't throw smoke leh.

Edited by Kusje
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