I admire this coin. It’s a great piece of history, but because the private keys are exposed and have been revealed to several parties, there is no trust in these coins to store BTC safely or effectively, despite their history. That’s sort of the consensus, if we are being honest. If I did this and tried passing these coins off, the community would explode into outrage. It’s worth more to the original owner. I wouldn’t buy it loaded and wouldn’t pay more than $1,000 premium + gold value for it. The risks are way too high to spend 100K on such a coin. I wouldn’t even suggest that auction houses accept and feature this item for auction, unless it was redeemed, as it’s a pure liability for anyone who holds it, especially if it’s loaded.
Thanks for the honest re-evaluation and for your thoughts on the market premium.
I won't debate the valuation or price—I leave that entirely to the market and collectors.
However, I would like to provide some objective historical facts regarding the "trust" and "liability" concerns you mentioned, purely for the accuracy of the archive:
1. On-Chain Evidence of Trust
The blockchain data suggests that original owners have not viewed these coins as "liabilities."
Total Balance: The series was originally loaded with 100 BTC. Today, the unredeemed coins hold approximately 405.66 BTC.
Active Accumulation: Instead of sweeping the keys, owners have actively deposited more funds. For example, one coin from this series now holds 26.66 BTC (
https://mempool.space/address/1Ls7uJSrepkudoRkhTYWsFNE5GAFaVkCtv).
This demonstrates that the "Three-Party Separation" process (where keys were generated and encrypted in an offline, mutually supervised environment) has held the community's trust for over a decade.
2. Manufacturing Context (2014)
In 2014 (when BTC was ~$500), the production cost for this community project was roughly $2,500 (5 BTC) per coin . This was a non-commercial experiment to physicalize the concept of "Digital Gold."
