Bitcoin Forum

Just saw this inspiring story today and felt the obligation to share.

Meet The Man Traveling The World On $25 Million Of Bitcoin Profits
https://www.forbes.com/sites/bishopjordan/2017/07/07/bitcoin-millionaire/#16c131956261

The guy bought 20,000 BTCs with $3000 when a bitcoin was sold at $0.15 in Oct 2010, sold 19,000 of them after 3 years at different time periods, and got a realized profit of $25M.

"For the next three years, Smith worked his day job and largely forgot about his investment, until Bitcoin’s price leaps started making more mainstream news in 2013. “I couldn’t believe how quickly it was appreciating,” says Smith, speaking very quickly now. “It started rising by 10% or more every day. I was nervous, and excited, and terrified and confused all at the same time.” When the price hit $350, more than two thousand times what he paid for it, Smith sold 2,000 of his early stock; when the price hit $800 just days later, he sold 2,000 more. Just like that, Smith had landed upon a windfall of $2.3 million. “It was absolutely insane,” he says. “I quit my job and left on a round-the-world trip the following week.”"

What do you think?  Any similiar stories to share?

I don't think there are many like him.

There'll be die hards who'll never sell. There'll also be more people who perhaps bought similar amounts but blew it badly long before they realised profits like this.

Seems kinda strange to just forget about a $3000 investment, which makes me think that he might have been pretty well off before he made his big fortunes with Bitcoin.
I can ionly drean that something like that would ever happen to me, though I do have a few $100 worth of altcoins that I've almost forgotten about ;)

I can confidently say that there are indeed others like him who made lots of money off bitcoins and I always dreamt I was one of those people, but it's still not too late to make money from bitcoins.

That is good to hear that bitcoin is a reason some people are happy. I doubt we will see price movement so great to make people who own only a couple of BTC rich in the future.
I would like to hear stories from men who bought/mined/earned bitcoin in its early years and then forgot their wallet passwords, lost their private keys due to hardware failure or human error.
There was a man who claimed that he had 20k bitcoin and he simply forgot about it when he changed his old HDD to new SSD. I probably would kill myself over a failure of that magnitude...

The guy was a software engineer for a large technology company in Silicon Valley.  I smell big $$$ in it.


It is not too late except that we have to put a much bigger stake to be rich like him as the price of bitcoins is already $2500.  

It's funny that each time the price goes up significantly, articles like these pop up. Not that long ago we had a millionaire school dropout who invested in Bitcoin at the time the price was like $12. Now this article pops up, and what's next? Granny finds out that $1000 investment in 2011 has made her a multi millionaire? I don't add any sort of value to these articles since there is no way to confirm if this has really happened. In normal circumstances, people finding out that they have made a fortune will not just openly share this with the whole world. I don't buy it.

Yeah, maybe this is one way to attract investors anew when the price of bitcoin is down. I think there are a lot of similar stories globally and in due time we gonna see it pop one after another. I still consider this a good news for bitcoin market in general.  Let us wait and maybe next month a Granny will soon be a millionaire.  ;D

Sounds a lot like me, except I had $3,000 when it was $15, and didn't buy. Ooops.

Hindsight is 20/20, right?

On the bright side, I am still involved with Bitcoin and hopefully someday will be in this guy's position, or even close to it. I would be cool with a couple of mil'. :)

Both of you are true, their is no one who in reality have confirmed it only the stories popup in between about the old person bought and forget or some thing else. But the stories not coming up where their are users who have not only forget bought bitcoins but even lost the wallet and its keys to open it and now feeling so sorry for doing that.

Since bitcoin is not popular before i think they are just few also the man who receive a free bitcoin just for doing a simple order of pizza..
I could not remember if how many bitcoin he got i think around 1k to -10k.. those people can be more patience $25 million is small amount if he holdings bitcoin until now.. 2013 bitcoin was become popular after the price hit 1k value never heard bitcoin i was late to know it..
There are some people are actually lucky that can make their small money into huge amount. and even me anytime i can stop to do my job and thinking to start a  business in my own..

How did these people hear about Bitcoin in 2010? Word of mouth?

LoL this is interesting topic. My friend tried to convince me to buy 10k bitcoins in 2010 for 100 EUR. I believe he found out about bitcoin on some forum. I have no idea how the conversation even ended up about bitcoins. I was very very skeptical about it... I think the price was something like 0.01 USD for 1 BTC. But we decided not to buy bitcoins but instead went to Mcdonald's and spent it on "healthy" food...

I think that even if we bought the 10k BTC as soon the price would hit 1$ we would sell it, probably... Imagine how I felt years later hearing in news that price of bitcoin reached 1k USD :DDDDD

Mmm the $500,000,000 McDonald's. I bet it was tasty. Hope they didn't charge you for the dips.

I think Smight will regret selling for $350, he could've been extremely rich and he blew it. On one hand it was a great experience and he got a lot of money from that trade, but if he decided to wait just 3 more years, he would've held a real fortune of over 50 million dollars and i'm sure if he held it until 2018, he'd have at least 10 million more.
Can't say I don't envy him in a way, but I'd have a lot of regrets if I were him.

I am hearing these sort of news recently ,what happened all the bitcoin millionaires wants to flaunt their millions they earned from the small investments they made.  ;D I am really sad that i did not invest in bitcoin in the early days ,here is another lucky individual who has his life settled for good because of his wise investment when it all mattered,what is interesting is that he will be selling his last thousand coins when the price reaches over $100000.  :o

I do not call that regrets, i will call that greed. :P He profited over $25 million and it is more than enough to settle for the rest of his life,you really do not cry about the profit he made with his mere $3000 investment,i would have sold well before reaching $100 if i were having those kind of coins in my arsenal. :P

Any people who can experience the same as him is the only people who knows bitcoin 2010 or before 2013. for now it is hard to buy large number of bitcoin because the price today compare before is really cheap and today the price is really high.. but there are still possibility that the price of bitcoin can be increase but we can't be make a $25 million if we don't invest a lot of money in bitcoin..
This man was lucky that he found bitcoin and invest.. If i'm the one who holding a good amount of bitcoin maybe i started to business with bitcoin..

If it was me getting my hands on $25M sweet cash I'd be donating $2.5M exactly 10% to poor people and then would've invested $20M back into bitcoin again even with the current price and would have done a giveaway to 100 people 0.1 each :D then would go and travel around the world with the rest. spending and keeping all for himself is the most selfish things to do. and if he could wait a few more years he would've more than double of that amount, what a loss.

Lucky him to forget about that huge amount of btc and th rise of the price of it :) i believe he is lucky for that and he should enjoy his money.

If that story is true, and i do not see why it would not be, it is an extraordinary story and an inspiring one. I can not imagine what state of mind that man has been true, when you see that you are becoming rich, god damn too rich maybe xD. I hope that he is happy now, traveling across the world, it must be an unique thing, to be possible to see every part of world... just wow. I guess there are not many people like him, but there could be some.

I think it is all about all luck somehow. He also one of those who stopped believing and good thing is that he was able to bought for it before and experiencing his luck right now is just amazing. Sad to say i am not one of those who knows bitcoin that early time. I just wonder if what is he doing right now to rotate his profit

What a fool. If i was travelling around the world i would sell a bitcoin or two at a time when i need cash.

Good on him. I think most of the early adopters holding a lot and never selling still hold most of it today. Nothing wrong with that, of course, but at least there are a few who've made the most of the good fortune they had.

Can't say I'd have done the same as he, I typically know myself to be a bit cautious. Then again, never experienced coming into so much wealth.

So how many do You have?  And at what price when you bought them?

I believe we will keep hearing about these stories in the future, some of these people may want to stay anonymous though. I remember reading about a Norwegian man who bought bitcoins back in 2009 for 27$ (5000 BTC), he forgot about them until bitcoin was being mentioned in the news, he checked his wallet and voilà, he is rich! I'm not sure how others really see this but I personally feel like hodling each time I read about these stories.

Even though he would have gotten more money by waiting a bit more, I sure damn would have done the same. I might even cash out half of them if I were him. But damn he had the guts to invest that much money even though bitcoin was far far from mainstream when he first started investing. I used to be a skeptic.

Excessive Hubris gets everyone or as others call it Irrational exuberance

People may have and make a fortune on a whim but end up selling it early even I am guilty of that one hehe but it's never to late to build larger positions. For him he already sold enough to do whatever he wants so he can and should just hold the rest off until a time when he needs it. He should be cautious and keep his core stake that is strategy the 1K will cover any stupidity and be his bottom line.

He took a small gamble for him at the time 3K when it was pretty much just a game coin and it worked for him, others have done the same Laszlo sold to a certain person who is rich now who could easily hire Laszlo to make a pizza store and deliver the pizzas for him but we remember Laszlo in the end cause sometimes its just how the way things roll.

Great story. Good for him. I know that a lot of the early adopters dumped their coins even before Bitcoin reached three figures. A lot of them, who purchased BTC at $0.1 or $0.2 per coin dumped them, when the currency surged to $25 per coin in 2011. But I still have a feeling that he should have kept at least half of his coins for the future, rather than dumping 95% of them.

There may be not another person like him thats not what we are really looking for. What we are looking for is a > $50 coin that could have a chance to make it like BTC.

lucky for him wish i knew about bitcoin before back when it was cheap if i were him i would sell 500 bitcoins each of the time while the price is still increasing , i would invest and find a altcoin which can follow the path of the bitcoin price

Isn't that Franky1? because he was mentioning once that he is in the flights all the times, anyways, I'd like him to lend me 20 Bitcoins then I'll pay him back 1BTC every month for 20 months, but I assume if he wanted to do that then he wouldn't be flying around jumping pussies, lol

https://i.imgflip.com/1s6b5v.jpg     https://i.imgflip.com/1s6bcn.jpg

I don't know. I believe that guy made some big money with bitcoin. However I hardly can believe he invested $3000 back in 2010 when it was worth almost nothing and barely any infrastructure or ecosystem existed!
The story smells fishy to me. Probably just some crap story he made up to get attention from media for whatever reason!

He's one of the few who were able to pull off this kinds of profits from their initial investment back in 2010. Even though he would be a lot richer if he held his coins it is good that he cashed in a bit to enjoy his life. I'm positive he didn't sell all his coins.

i think you mean 2008 or 2009 because by 2010 bitcoin was already kind of popular. it was listed on exchanges and it was being traded.
and not to mention the fact that you could easily mine it with your PC using just your CPU in those days. and when it is already listed on some exchange and has some daily volume it means it will attract articles that people encounter and read and find out about bitcoin. something like forbes.com writing about it now. or yahoo finances,...

There is no way to verify this story.

Unless, of course, the so-called millionaire signs a message from a 1000 BTC address saying that he is the one sighted in the article.