Bitcoin Forum

Hello,
 
My first post here.

My name is Dominic Frisby. I am a comedian and author from the UK. I write a column for Moneyweek, host this podcast and made this Debt Bomb video which some of you may have seen - ( http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GXcLVDhS8fM  (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GXcLVDhS8fM))
 
I'm a long-time anti-fiat money campaigner - and I made this vid on the subject way back when ( http://commoditywatch.podbean.com/ (http://commoditywatch.podbean.com/) )
 
Anyway I have begun work on a book about Bitcoin ( http://unbound.co.uk/books/bitcoin (http://unbound.co.uk/books/bitcoin) ) which I am hoping will be the first book by a recognized publisher on the subject. It is being crowd-funded. (and you can fund it with BTC if you want - http://dominicfrisby.com/news/the-future-of-money/pay-with-bitcoin-for-bitcoin-the-future-of-money (http://dominicfrisby.com/news/the-future-of-money/pay-with-bitcoin-for-bitcoin-the-future-of-money) ).
 
The reason I am posting, is that I am looking for some good Bitcoin millionaire stories - people who became BTC millionaires by accident and so on.
 
I promise full confidentiality, changed names and all the rest of it, but if you have a bitcoin millionaire story - please could you get in touch?
 
Do you have such a story - please let me know here ( http://dominicfrisby.com/archive/send-me-an-email  (http://dominicfrisby.com/archive/send-me-an-email))
 
With thanks
 
DF

PS I can't work out how to insert hyperlinks. Agh.

What's a bitcoin millionaire for you? A person with more than 1,000,000 BTC?

Noone become millionaire by accident. If we exclude the illegitimate ways, even mining for a day or two in 2009 and forgetting about them until today is the right thing to do, not an accident.

On the other hand they is a lot, and I do mean A LOT of stories of people who could have become that and didn't cause stupid for the most part. You should cover those, educationally.

No, it's someone with a million Satoshi.

1 Bitcoin? Good question actually what do you consider a millionaire. A person with enough btc which converts into 1 million fiat or 1 million Bitcoin itself?

I meant someone who has made a lot of money out of BTC - 1 million bucks or something. Enough significantly change their life.

And, yes, you make a good point - there is a story to be told about those who sold too early.

From its first exchange price at 1,300 to 1USD, bitcoin was a million bagger for somebody!

I don't necessarily think that having a net worth of 1 mill makes you a millionaire...  maybe 5-10mill...or maybe as low as 2-3 mill..  I could be wrong, but when I think of millionaire, I think of more than 1 million...

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Millionaire


In general, 5-10 million (or even 2-3 million) is commonly known as "multi-millionaire".

LOL i can't believe this whole thread so far is about "What do you mean by a Millionaire"

Obviously he means you had a bunch of Bitcoin, preferably by investing little to no money, then one day woke up and had the equivalent of a million US Dollars or more.

And then an even better variation of the story is that you cashed out and bought your own Jet.

Seems pretty obvious that's what he's looking for.  Success stories!

-B-

I would consider someone a Bitcoin millionaire if they had over 100 BTC, and especially over 1000 BTC.

officially a millionary is one who owns one million dollars

I don think theres some one with 1M BTC out there  ;)

That’s a very interesting scoop. I already read a lot of stories about bitcoin millionaires. Maybe you could find some informative stuff at bitcoindaily.com that will help you on your writings.

Olivier Janssens, bitcoin foundation member, pays for private jet by btc.

http://www.coindesk.com/bitcoin-millionaire-olivier-janssens-private-jet-privatefly/

Lily Allen turned down 100,000 btc to do concert in second life in 2009.

http://www.independent.co.uk/arts-entertainment/music/news/lily-allen-calls-herself-an-idiot-for-declining-bitcoin-payment-now-worth-millions-9046211.html

Mark Karpeles estimated to have 345,000 btc.

http://www.wired.com/wiredenterprise/2013/11/mtgox/

Looking forward to this book; I'll certainly be buying a copy! Also; please donate one to the Bitcoin Museum at https://www.thebitcoinmuseum.com/ !

Good article on Charlie Shrem

http://www.vocativ.com/12-2013/night-bitcoin-millionaire-proud-stoner-charlie-shrem/


Also search redditt there are a lot of life changing stories there.

I'm a bitcoin millionaire.

More interesting would be, not people who sold too early, but people that mined say 10,000+ Bitcoin, and then forgot about it and maybe reformatted their HDD or something like that. I think there was a story of a guy who had a HDD with a large amount of Bitcoin on it, and he threw it away, and went digging through the dump. Ouch!! :'(

Edit: Yep, here's the article on the guy who threw out his HDD. 7500 Bitcoin mined on a laptop!! Those were the days, LOL!!

http://www.theguardian.com/technology/2013/nov/27/hard-drive-bitcoin-landfill-site

A Bitcoin millionaire is somebody who has over a million £ or $ in Bitcoins. I think Satoshi is the only Bitcoin billionaire, or he was at least.


How would that make them a millionaire? 1000BTC is currently £371,700.

A millionaire? I'm pretty sure you need to have 1 million bitcoins to qualify as a millionaire.
There can be at most 21 bitcoin millionaires at any given time.

Well if it's just having about 100BTC, there is plenty of millionaires out there.

Is it really interesting at all ?

This is not quite true.

As of the year 2028, there will be more than 20,000,000 bitcoins in existence, however there will never be as many as 20,999,999.9769

Therefore, after 2028, there can be at most 20 bitcoin millionaires at any given time (and one person who is frustratingly close to being a millionaire, but falls just short).

I can't remember exactly how many bitcoins have been destroyed, so I'm not sure just how short of being a millionaire the extra person falls.

According to estimations, a part of Bitcoins are lost.
Some say that up to 1/3 of Bitcoin are or will be lost.
So that's 14 Bitcoins millionaires max.

I suppose that depends on whether significant enough weaknesses are ever found in the RIPEMD-160, SHA-256, and ECDSA algorithms.  If significant enough weaknesses are discovered, then those "lost" bitcoins can be recovered, once again increasing the maximum number of possible millionaires.  There are however some bitcoins that were completely destroyed due to a bug in someone's mining program.  They no longer exist, and can't be recovered without changing the nature of the bitcoin protocol.  I'm not sure exactly how many were destroyed, but I suspect that it was significantly less than 1000 BTC.

If you just take the case of XCP : 2130.84 BTC have been burned (lost forever).
https://blockchain.info/address/1CounterpartyXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXUWLpVr

What's the story of that address, Superresistant?

However, if such a weakness were found, it could just as well be used to "recover" bitcoins that are currently in other people's wallets and essentially are "lost" to me :-)
This would certainly increase the number of possible bitcoin millionaires, but in practice it would mean that either
- I would become the sole bitcoin multimillionaire (if I knew the secret and didn't tell anybody)
- Everybody could be a bitcoin millionaire for a short moment until the coins are siphoned away again (if everybody knew the trick).
In both cases, owning a million bitcoins would be comparable to owning a million zimbabwean dollars...

Onkel Paul

As I said, those are "lost".  They still exist, they've just been sent to an address for which almost certainly nobody currently has the private key.

However, if significant enough weaknesses are ever found in the RIPEMD-160, SHA-256, and ECDSA algorithms, those bitcoins could be recovered.

There are a number of bitcoins that have actually "destroyed".  They no longer exist in the blockchain.  I don't recall how many, but those bitcoins cannot be recovered without changing the nature of the bitcoin protocol.

Can someone please post a definition of millionaire?

If such weaknesses are discovered, the cryptographic signature and hash algorithms used by Bitcoin could be updated.

You're right, if weaknesses to all three were "suddenly" discovered by a single person and kept secret, they could steal all the bitcoins.  However, realistically, this is not how cryptography becomes broken.  It is nearly certain that progressive weaknesses will be discovered slowly over a period of months or, more likely, years. This will allow plenty of time to change the addresses that bitcoins are stored in (excepet the ones that are "lost", which then could eventually be recoverable).

As a practical matter, there can't be anywhere near 20 bitcoin millionaires, since far too many people own portions of bitcoins that they would not give up.  But as an mental exercise, the technical details of the bitcoin protocol limit the maximum possible number to 20.  

I already did.

Of course, you make a habit of random posts without putting any effort into reading the content of the threads you are posting it.  For that matter, you generally don't even read the OP, and instead blindly post comments based entirely on the subject line.

What I would suggest:

If you convert all your BTC today into US-$/UK-£/Euro-€, would you have more than 1000000 $/£/€ just from conversion of BTC?

Or did you do that in the past (maybe when BTC was > 1000 US-$), did you convert enough to receive 1000000 $/£/€ or more?

That would in my opinion qualify as someone who became a millionaire through Bitcoin.
(Even better if you were a "poor" college kid or a single mother of 3 small children 4 years ago and simply mined some bitcoin then because it was crypto fun)

 :)

It is the proof of burn address of Counterparty (XCP). Look for proof-of-burn (https://en.bitcoin.it/wiki/Proof_of_burn) and Counterparty (https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=395761.0) for more details.

All BTC sent are lost.

Depends in what currency. In Zimbabwe there were lots of millionaires and billionaires in 2008/09. But they didn't have enough to buy food.

http://www.infiniteunknown.net/wp-content/uploads/2012/06/Starving-Billionaire.jpg

Does Satoshi even have a million Bitcoins?


Can someone please define definition?

That doesn't mean that they weren't millionaires (or multi-millionaires, or billionaires).  The definition still applies.  It just means that being a millionaire in that particular currency isn't very impressive or useful.

Okay, let's say being Millionaire is having the equivalent of 1 Million USD.

.

.

Actually the maximum number of Bitcoins is 20999999.9769 because of rounding. And that excludes lost coins which are about 30% of the total of 12.4 million coins.

Well I would be happy if I had one Btc, let alone more then a 1000. Anyway all those who have now more then 1000 I consider very lucky people.

I used to have a million dollars in bitcoins. Not anymore since the price drop, labcoin scandal, ukyo.loan etc. ... lol :(

lol. Proves my first point btw. You can basically skip the rest of the retarded thread.

Was there any of those so-called Bitcoin "investments" that was worthwhile? Lost over half my coins in them. :(

Yes.


http://trilema.com/2013/the-best-investments-in-the-history-of-bitcoin/

When you do find some to interview, please do ask to see proof, as otherwise you are likely to get trolled by some 13 year old basement dweller. :)

It sounds like an interesting project.

Thanks very much for your comments guys. Some good links.

All I meant was .... people who had made a lot of money and had funny stories to tell. The definition of Bitcoin is kind of irrelevant.

So , yes, any more amusing Bitcoin stories - please post them below!

Books nearly done now - here's a link to it for those that are interested. - http://unbound.co.uk/books/bitcoin

I have lost half of my coins in BTCT.co.

It was such a mistake, and I am cursing myself everyday for it.

I lost a few on neo bee

I have over 1 million doge coins... >.>.. I WANTED TO BE A MILLIONARE DAMNIT! hehehe

Who wants to be a bitcoin Millionaire!?!

http://qfxblog.files.wordpress.com/2011/11/anil-kapoor.jpg

would be more interesting to know who lost everything

I had 10 computers sitting idle when i know about bitcoin. That time very easy to mine using computers. But i cannot able to setup properly and stopped mining.

I thought I remember hearing mtv true life wanting to do an episode I'm a bitcoin millionaire. This obviously means having over a million dollars worth of bitcoin.

i know some one who is super rich when it comes to bitcoins....
he is the owner of the only btc mmo casino i have found....
founder of a tale in the deserts a award winning mmo and also the great dragons tale btc mmo....
i think he should be in the list of super rich btc users  :P

A bitcoin millionaire should be holding 1.0 M + bitcoins because imagine if the USD or Euro didnt exist... would you still be a millionaire?

Would love for a few people to post their stories, even if anonymously. I think it would make for a fascinating read. Specifically, I would be curious to know:

• When did you first hear about Bitcoin and acquire your first coins?
• Did you buy or mine?
• How did you resist selling once you had seen your first 10, 100, 1000x gain?
• When did you realise you were going to be super wealthy?
• What do you plan to do with your fortune?

:) interesting, hope it will convert to great story, wish you luck

HOLY shit! I just saw a video of her's the other day and I thought, damn, she's hot. I had no idea she turned down 100k BTC - that would have put her up there with the Winklevii. WOW, that's insane, I'll always think of this now when I see one of her vids LOL

thats a FIAT millionaire..

a bitcoin millionaire is someone with 1 million bitcoins.. OFFICIALLY

EG if a chinese person was a bitcoin millionaire in your delusion of logic, they would only need a couple hundred BTC

I'd figure someone with 1 million usd in bitcoins to be a Bitcoin Millionaire. As right now, I doubt anyone has a budget for it.

they are just a FIAT millionaire
after all having a million USD in december makes them only have $500k today..

so thats 500k and only 100,000 coins. i do not call that a millionaire in any term.. and due to the illogical delusion of how you calculate who is a millionaire, every day they can become or drop out of being a bitcoin millionaire.

its just an illogical thing and something only teenagers would jerk off to...

art collectors and antiques traders dont call themselves 'art millionaires' as thy know its illogical to own 1 million pieces of art

Millionaire? So many think they are but so few truly are.

There's no need to crucify someone for their opinion. He simply stated what he believed a bitcoin millionaire to be. You don't need to be so negative.

I wish I was one of the bitcoin millionaires. Oh wait, I can still be one. I just haven't figured out how yet.

Anyway, I think many of the big names have stories that they rather keep secret. Maybe you could beg them to contact you anonymously.

I hopped onto the wagon late, unfortunately.  Can't imagine scoring a couple thousand Bitcoins and waking up to a couple mil though.  Would be sweet!!

Perhaps meaning someone who has made a million of normal fiat by investing in bitcoins early?

Well, if all it takes to be a millionaire is for your bitcoins to be worth a million of some fiat somewhere, then there are probably a lot more millionaires then you'd think.

If I'm not mistaken, 1,000,000 Vietnamese đồng is approximately 0.0825 bitcoins.  So anyone with more than 0.0825 bitcoins is a millionaire!

Well, I was here early enough, but sold my coins for $2 after the crash from $30... So no millions for me sadly :'(

Good ol' days when you could mine dozens of coins per day, per videocard... lol!

I still remember the stories of people who mined thousands of coins with their CPU, just a few months earlier... really crazy how this whole thing exploded in just a few years...

I also missed the 2008 stock market crash buying opportunity... Our brains are wired to respond to these in a bad way, but hopefully now I learned my lesson and will sit tight next time...   :P

If you did cash out a million dollars to your bank account, aren't there some legal/technical issues to consider, right?

Thats why they invented the British Virgin Islands.

Well....100,000 bitcoins is over $50million.....