Bitcoin Forum

Source: https://twitter.com/nobsbitcoin/status/1409135272785235971

BitcoinTalk Profile: https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?action=profile;u=52741

Wired article about Mircea Popescu: https://www.wired.com/2014/01/openbsd/

https://media.wired.com/photos/59327671a3126458449951d4/master/pass/bitcoin-baron-feat.jpg

Now this is till unconfirmed therefore we cannot just take this news and move forth. At the same time the article uses *CLAIMED* therefore the fact that he did have 1 million bitcoins is not something that is proven. I do think that even if he have died and no one knows where his bitcoins is, it would be more like *long term holding* until his family finds them and decides to sell.

Well the reason of death could also give us an insight into the whole thing, which I do not see happening since we have no confirmed article here about what has happened to him. Maybe he was killed because the person knew he owned so much and tried to steal them. Who knows ? Let us wait for a confirmed, detailed news.

he won't leave, so there's no way to access 1 million bitcoins without leaving a file. so we're all going to lose another bitcoin in a sinking market somewhere. buried and waiting for who can access the wallet.

He was last active in bitcointalk forum back in April 2016 and I see that he has negative feedback with scam accusations, but even Roger Ver posted that he is now dead,
and I am sure he was not a Polish man like that Costa Rican crhoy.com article is saying, but he was actually from Romania.
I do hope he left his private keys to someone, or those Bitcoins are lost forever in ocean with him.

It could be the opposite. A person doesn't keep a million bitcoin for so long without having it very secure, so it's most likely gone.

Even if it were found, it's unlikely and impossible for a single individual to convert that much to cash quickly.

MP was an asshole, but I liked him for the most part.

RIP

I doubt he had 1 million Bitcoin though.

His exchange had a wonderful FAQ.

How much is a lifejack these days?  0.001 BTC?

First of all, I agree. There is no evidence for any of this and even if 1 million worth ob BTC was to be lost it would still not account much for the market moves as it is still BTC out in circulation, maybe no longer accessible.

The scarcity of BTC does not change. The only difference is that it might be lost and if it is it won't affect the market. So the news is completely market irrelevant.

Mircea Popescu is 100% a Romanian name. Source: I'm Romanian myself :D

If he didn't store his keys somewhere, well.. it's a donation to everyone, right?

If someone started adding all the coins claimed to belong to someone (Satoshi, Winklevoss twins, Mircea Popescu, Bulgarian governments and so on), they'd quickly find that Bitcoin's supply is more than 21 million  ;)

I don't know much about Mircea Popescu, only that he had some controversial reputation. Could he be faking his death? Does he have any reasons to?

No they wouldn't.  That's not how this stuff works.


He talked too much to fake his death.  I imagine this is real.

Just seems like such a peasant way of dying... drowning.  Sheesh.

I doubt he had a million coins and there is no evidence that ever held that much coins and these are just claims and the headline looks great, even with his tainted reputation here and his bitbet which scammed some to the amount of 10 BTC and then the gigamining fiasco and he might have made a huge amount of coins through these activities but not a million coins for sure.

I am sorry if I missed some details but where does it show that the guy owned 1 Million Bitcoins? Any address(es) containing the funds that are signed by him?
The feedback on his profile seems to suggest that he wasn't someone trustworthy.

I think you're misunderstanding. It's not 1 million worth of Bitcoin that is being discussed here, but 1 million Bitcoins. So it is not market irrelevant at all, it's a massive amount of coins that could be taken out of circulation.

Mircea was an interesting character to me and I have followed him through the years. He ran a securities exchange that cost 50 BTC to register and trade on, and at no point did that amount ever get reduced (even after Bitcoin increasing 1000x in value from when that rule was established). He ran a prediction market called BitBet.us before selling it off, and I actually used it before it was shut down completely. There were some huge bets on that site, even for what BTC was worth at that time, notably one that had 5.5k BTC volume.

http://qntra.net/2015/03/largest-bitcoin-bet-resolved/

Mircea had his own blog here (http://trilema.com/) where he posted financial statements of the securities that traded on his exchange as well as philosophical musings/rants, and as you can see through the history he posted very frequently (basically every day). Last post was on June 23rd.

Go through that blog and you'll see that if he is dead, he's probably not the kind of person that would let anyone access to his coins in the case of his death.  :D He might not have had a million BTC, but it wouldn't surprise me too much if he did. He certainly was a whale and I've always believed him to be in the 6 digits.

No, but this is how the news work, fake or not, doesn't even matter, since all exaggerate.
Some of those numbers are for real, but not all. And if you start adding up all those alleged lost coins in huge amounts from the news you have a good chance to already get to more than the current supply.

As @praine mentioned this info is mostly coming from MP's blog where he posted the financial situations (http://trilema.com/2012/the-btc-million/) or by his "PR account" (https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=321265.msg3449849#msg3449849) (same source though...)

P.S his last post on the blog was on 22 June 2021 regarding a MMORPG game called Rage of Mages, being hyped that Rage of Mages 2 came out. At the end it's all about the simple things in life I guess

If there's a file that can access the wallet containing the alleged million bitcoins then probably all isn't that lost but for now we just have to enjoy the fact that the prices are going to go up again if there really is a million bitcoin that can't go back to the supply.

I knew nothing about this guy, a controversial figure, read some nasty things. Anyway, it's not nice to talk bad about the dead people. What we should all learn from this is there are more important things in life than BTC and no matter how much BTC you would own someday it will all by left behind. So it doesn't hurt to try be a better person as well.

Agree, you are remembered more for what you did than all the money that you have but enough of that. I am pretty skeptic in terms of the allleged number of his bitcoin which is a million, I don't think that anyone has enough money to buy that or even hodl for a really long time.

agree, there is a statement - blockchain transparency is amazing, and we should use that one, when seeing news like this one
you claim that you have xyz BTC, just sign a message with wallets, that add to the mentioned sum, otherwise, you cannot be trusted, easy and working

nevertheless, I did not know the guy, was not even aware that he was part of the early community, read some articles today, but sad that he passed away, RIP

This is the first time I hear or read anything about this guy.
If he really had 1 million BTC,he would be way more famous and popular across the crypto community.The crypto news websites would be gossiping about his Bitcoin wealth every day.He would've been as famous as Satoshi Nakamoto,Roger Ver,Craig Wright and Elon Musk.I think that he doesn't own 1M Bitcoins and this is just BS.
Was he a scammer?I read some articles,stating has was an early Bitcoin adopter back in 2011 and he had a cryptocurrency exchange platform.Is this even true?

Exactly, if we add all of them and then we throw in the number of so-called hacks and all the bitcoin stolen we might arrive at the conclusion not only a few guys own all the coins but they've also been robbed 10 times and they've managed to get their coins back. Same for the numbers of users or the percentage of the population owning bitcoin, adding those percentages we would end up with more than 4-5 hundred million, close to the total number of all the transactions ever made in the blockchain.
Oh, and let's not forget in that list knightmb, he had 370k BTC.


I don't think he had that amount, I don't think even 1/10 of that claim but at the same time why the hell must anyone owning larger amounts of bitcoins be the talk of the town and make the headlines of every news like rappers do when spending money around? Take a guess, how many people have heard of Bernard Arnault? Well, he is richer than Musk but I don't see him twittering all day long!

People dying and sending their BTC to purgatory (to the world of lost BTC) would be expected to be an ongoing issue moving forward: as of recently there are custody services in the US that will handle transfer of crypto to next of kin in the event of death but these services are very new, not available in many countries, and not quite mainstream.

The immediate effect of this is of course that the remaining BTC in the world becomes slightly more valuable as some is lost on an ongoing basis, not just from deaths but also people losing access for other reasons.

Maybe a month or so ago I read that he became the richest man in the world, and there was even a rumor that he had something to do with investing in cryptocurrencies - which he denied. Fortunately, not all rich people are eccentric psychopaths who play on social networks all day, and receive billions of incentives from the state, which they present as their business success.

If Popescu is really dead, he should be allowed to rest in peace - and if he had a certain amount of BTC and someone important in life, he must have made sure not to take his wealth to the grave. He obviously had a lot of fans who now want him not to be forgotten, but I personally don’t remember him in the context of this forum considering he hasn’t been active for the past 5 years.

When coins are passed to the kin, in most of the cases they may not be interested in the concept of cryptocurrency and the easiest option for them may be to dump all the coins at once. So IMO, it is better for the overall health of cryptocurrency, if these coins are lost. Bitcoin doesn't deserve to be in the hands of people who hates it. And more so, if they end up in their hands as a result of inheritance. BTW, I don't think that Mircea Popescu owned anyway near the amount mentioned here. It is not even possible to accumulate that many coins, given the date when he first entered the cryptocurrency market.

dunno, it would help my credulity along a ways if he had died in a less corrupt part of the world.

I'm reading: "Man with 1,000's of BTC issued a death certificate in a corrupt country, had humongous ego + known history of high level trolling/manipulating"

i followed MP off and on through the years. like him or hate him he was definitely a smart and careful person.

i got the impression that he had plans for that coin, and even if it wasnt finalized 100% he had a course of action set up in case.  whether that plan was take it to the grave (ie "donation to everyone") or to make sure it was used in a matter that he chose is a given. as to what plan was uppermost at the time of his alledged death remains to be seen, but im absolutely sure he gave it the same thought and planning he gave most of his ideas (of course that doesnt mean that all of his ideas and plans were good).

were any addys under his personal control ever known?

another possibility: maybe he has timelocked (whatever that term is.. nLockTime?) txs ready to fire at some point using bitcoins built in equivalent of a dead mans switch?

RIP MP

"F"

Yes, this definitely leaves a suspicion similar to the case of Gerald Cotten who went to India and reportedly passed away, while also taking with him all the private keys of his crypto exchange. Of course, the situation is not nearly the same in the sense that Popescu is scamming someone (although there are various accusations against him), but money can buy everything, especially in countries where everyone is corrupt.

Information that can be found about him says that the man was a racist and sexist, and that his blog was even banned in India. When we draw the line below everything, he was definitely (or still is) a controversial person.

https://twitter.com/pete_rizzo_/status/1409134130676305921
https://gadgets.ndtv.com/cryptocurrency/news/mircea-popescu-bitcoin-billionaire-dies-at-41-2474796

I have been to India multiple times, and I have resided there for months. I have relatives and friends in India. And based on all this, let me say that it is not impossible for someone to fake his death in India. If you have the money, and in case you have the "connections", then these sort of operations can be done with ease. Now I don't have any evidence to prove that Gerald Cotten (of QuadrigaCX) faked his death and he is still alive. But I am saying that there is a strong possibility that he might have done it.

His posts in this forum are still up including discussions about his various projects and his blog (trilema.com) is public as well.
If you need to rely on articles to spoon feed you information or to do fact checking for you, I have bad news...

Which is an even more weak evidence because it's just an estimated market value of his assets in bitcoin which means he doesn't actually hold those coins. In addition, we don't know if he has sold 'em all at that price (or more). Considering how no one took over MPex, I'm leaning on nope.

My man probably wants to troll the world one last time even though is already dead. Probably there's some truth to this story but we can't be so sure about it anyways because we don't know the whole story behind this.

He was Romanian. One of the articles linked by OP calls him a Romanian Bitcoin baron, but maybe they found a Polish ID with him or something ???

I remember reading about him when I came to the forum and I thought some people treated him like a kind of cult leader. There was a girl who acted like his personal mouthpiece on the forum but got banned for something.

I doubt he still owned a million bitcoins when he died but even if he had 100 thousand it's still a sad thing that he had so much and was never able to spend it. Life is short, remember this.

Anyone surprised that individual large BTC HODLers, who did not adhere to authorities, like John McAfee & Mircea Popescu are mysteriously dying, while large exchanges like Binance are facing regulatory blockage world wide? Billionaires like Elon Musk are suddenly discovering issues with Bitcoin, while Chinese miners are forced to shut down. All these are happening after G7 summit.

Its funny, my wife mentioned this to me this morning, that some rich Bitcoiner drowned,
I had to investigate and here he is or was Mircea Popescu.

The more I read of him the more I dislike, racism and sexism are two of the most ugly traits.
I doubt he has left the keys to his crypto to anyone if indded he has died,
but will someone find them? that is intriguing.

Some will say that nothing in this world happens by accident, but if we reject conspiracy theories - I don't see how all these events are connected unless EM works for the Chinese, and at the same time they have a special team of assassins who eliminate those who have some evidence against them.

It all sounds to me like another in a series of films from the Mission Impossible series - especially since you mention the G7 at the end - which is actually just a cover for those who actually decide everything. At the end, who can prove that JM and Popescu were killed when they both died in a very appropriate way - one in a prison cell and the other in the depths of the ocean, the truth is as they presented it, believe it or not, nothing will change.

If you think about it, the events relating to Bitcoin, cryptocurrencies, and people related to Cryptocurrencies are much much more frequent now than any other news about Bitcoin and crypto for the past few years. I mean that is what I feel, I don't know about you guys but the powers that be might have something cooking against cryptocurrency and Bitcoin. Sooner or later we will see more and more news that will affect the markets and make people scrambling to sell their coins.

In McAfee's case, it is clear that he committed suicide. He had previously given hints as well. Being an such an egoistic person, getting deported to the United States was something which he could not get himself adjusted to. Now the investigators will have a hard time in recovering the coins which he made during the ICO boom. However, the case of Mircea Popescu looks very suspicious. What are the chances that someone like him would venture alone in to a section of the beach which is known to be dangerous?

This was shown by the official investigation, which even states that he left suicide notes in the pocket of his pants - but also his wife claims that he talked to her that day and promised to hear from her in the evening. A second independent autopsy has been requested, but has not yet been approved, so there will remain doubt as to what actually happened - because JM may have known some things he needed to take with him to the grave.


Given his character and way of life, I wouldn't be surprised if he ignored all warnings and security measures, because when you have a lot of money in your life and you can afford everything, you start looking for excitement in some dangerous things - the biggest stake such people put on the gamble is their life.