I'm not sure this is real or not...but you should also interview people that mined back when it first started that COULD'VE been at least wealthy.
I know the sad stories are the people that had their bitcoins stolen, but I mined hundreds/thousands of bitcoins and just forgot about them. At the time they were worth maybe $3.....after being worth $20+ (kinda near beginning)
I Admin at a Enthusiast Computer Hardware website and still remember the first thread about Bitcoins. "How to pay for your Expensive Video Cards" I was "at the time" an avid overclcoker and had about 8 Ati 5870's and 5 5850's just laying around. Previously being used to run benchmarks for scores. up to quad-tri-cross Fire lol
I had the craziest setup in my house and still to this day I credit those rigs teaching my son about troubleshooting computers/hardware.
Bitcoins hovered around $3 for the longest time and being an overclocker I would reformat 50 times a month ...I just forgot about them and the pool I mined in. A lot was just mining with no pool. Having a family.... words can't describe how sick I've been since December.
anyways it would be cool to see something about the rise of Bitcoins.
ps...I'm more disappointed that I didn't continue to mine.
I've always dismissed the stories about early miners losing/destroying hundreds or thousands of coins as the stuff of legends as the early miners I've met waited until $.50 or $1 before selling out. However your story suggests that at least some of those unmoved blocks of 50 won't be entering circulation.