He Sat on $10M in Bitcoin for 13 Years—What Made This Chap Finally Blink?

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Well, here’s a yarn for the ages: A certain crypto enthusiast, having clung to his physical Bitcoin with the tenacity of a bulldog on a butcher’s leg for some 13 years, has finally decided to do the thoroughly modern thing and shuffle his digital ducats into a wallet. What could drive a chap to such dramatic measures, you ask? CryptoMoon got the skinny straight from the horse’s mouth.

Picture it: May 13th. Our protagonist — known in the wilds of BitcoinTalk as the shadowy and slightly Randian “John Galt” — reports the big move: a cool 100 Bitcoin (BTC) migrating from the safe embrace of a brass-and-bling Casascius bar into a newfangled hardware wallet. For those blissfully unaware, Casascius bars and coins are the sort of thing that cause both collectors and pickpockets to swoon — tangible tokens with secret keys nestled away under a sliver of film, like the prize in a particularly lucrative chocolate bar.

John, a forward-thinking soul (or perhaps, at the time, just preternaturally bored), bought his golden ticket back in 2012 when BTC was skirting the $100 line — which in those bygone days practically qualified as “silly money.”

“Back then I thought Casascius coins were cool and maybe the future,” he confessed to CryptoMoon, sounding rather like a chap who once bought Beanie Babies for their ‘historical significance.’ “I figured if Bitcoin ever got big these coins would be part of history so I started collecting.” Alas, if only my stamp collection had fared so well…

More than $10 million in physical Bitcoin 💰

On that fateful May 13th, fortunes smiled and Bitcoin’s price played along at around $104,000 a bit. Galt’s bar was now worth a sum large enough to make Scrooge McDuck trade in his diving board for a yacht. The idea of selling it whole once crossed his mind, but, as he put it, “Redeeming it felt like destroying a piece of history, like melting down some ancient gold necklace or something.”

The sticker, the shine, the allure — all of it made selling as a package deal trickier than keeping a full English breakfast away from an Oxford undergrad. “The higher the value went the harder that got.” The sticker in question being, of course, the security hologram that makes collectors coo and fraudsters weep.

So there it languished; 100 BTC lurking in a non-descript vault, tastefully not under the bed, and as out of reach as a bar tab at the Drones Club. Now that those coins have been spirited into the digital ether, Galt tells us he has no immediate plans to splash out on a Lamborghini, a yacht, or indeed a small Mediterranean island.

“Having 100 BTC is life-changing for anyone. But the thing is I’ve had it for so long that this was more about staying safe than suddenly getting rich.”

There’s only so many of these legendary bars and coins left, by the way. From adorable half-BTC brass coins (excellent for tossing to street urchins) to the positively baronial 100-BTC gold-plated behemoths. Each of these comes betwixt a tamper-evident hologram — because if there’s one thing we British love, it’s a good security feature.

The Casascius tracker, mischievously named Uberbills, tells us there are more than 17,000 unredeemed pieces still skulking about. That includes two bars worth 1,000 BTC apiece (and yes, that’s over $100 million each — the sort of sum that would make even Aunt Agatha’s eyebrow twitch), one 500-BTC bar, and enough 100-BTC bars to fill a rather strange treasure chest.

So next time you find yourself holding onto an old coin or a dusty bar, just remember: somewhere out there, a chap named John Galt is still ahead in the grand game of “hold my beer, watch this.” 🥂💸

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2025-07-08 00:31