Bitcoin BoardIn the past week we have gathered 4 “Accidental” Bitcoin Millionaires to do an exclusive interview with us. They share their story on how they first encountered Bitcoins, when they discovered that they were rich, and what their current lifestyle is. You would expect that they have a nice car, wear expensive clothes and buy other luxury items that wealthy people spend their money on, wouldn’t you? Surprisingly they don’t live the lavish lifestyle you would imagine, and they are living very moderately instead.
Meet Edward Stewart, 24 years old and living in the United States. He first heard about BTC in October 2010 when a forum thread about Bitcoins was started on a Graphic design forum that he visited regulary. He became interested but did not have money to invest in it as he was just a IT student. “Because I didn’t have the money to buy BTC I did small GFX jobs, and people would pay me in Bitcoins. 1 BTC was worth about 0.15$, at that time, and I would do design jobs like Logo creation, Banner design and coding WordPress templates. Each job netted me about $20 so people would pay me around 130 BTC on average whenever I did a small job for them.”
Edward forgot about his Bitcoins, until the beginning of 2012. “I remember thinking to myself: Didn’t I have some Bitcoins?”, he went into his basement to search for his old PC, and when he opened up his old wallet he nearly shat himself. “There were more then 1500 BTC just sitting in my wallet, and I totally forgot about them. I went to check the price and discovered that they were about $5 each and I couldn’t believe it.” He saved his coins, and at today’s rate they are worth about 1.2 Million Dollars. He hasn’t told anyone near him that he secretly is a millionaire, and he hasn’t cashed out a single coin, however he has moved them around to different wallets & addresses to spread the risk of losing them if a hardware failure would occur. “I don’t need the money right now, but its nice knowing that I am financially free. It really relieves some pressure from your back.”
The second person we interviewed wish to stay anonymous, and we talked to him via Skype. He has however showed us a few of his BTC adresses, and he sent us a small pre-fixed amount to verify it was him. We are going to refer to him as James. He lives in the United Kingdom and is 28 years old. “I started mining BTC back in 2011 with a few computers that were considered high-end at that time, which I had access to because the company I worked in used them.” He didn’t want us to disclose the amount of BTC he has at this moment, but it is fair to say he belongs to the “Bitcoin millionaires List”. He has cashed out some of his coins to start his own company, and to treat himself a nice vacation. “I have told close friends and some family members that I am a BTC Millionaire, but I generally prefer not to tell anyone. People start to act differently when they know you have money.”
John Shrader recently discovered that he had more then 1150 BTC and 5000 LTC sitting in his BTC-e (an online exchange) account. “I thought that I had lost my coins because the harddrive I had my wallet on was reformatted. Turns out the coins have never been in my wallet and were just sitting in my BTC-e account!” After he made this discovery he called in sick from work, to realize what steps he needed to follow to secure his re-found wealth. He moved the coins to some paper wallets, made several backups on a newly purchased & clean computer that has no other use then storing his coins. In todays rate he has an equivalent of just over 1 million dollars in both BTC & LTC. “I’m currently looking into ways to invest these coins in new startups centered around the cryptocurrency. I see a very positive future ahead for cryptocurrencies, and I know that there are a lot of exiting projects coming up soon!”
The Fourth Bitcoin Millionaire on our list is Daniel Koopmans from the Netherlands. He bought 2000 Bitcoins back in 2010 for $0.20 a piece (after converting euro’s to dollars), which was an investment of $400 at that time. He saw the potential of the cryptocurrency, and because it had a rock solid community backing it, he decided to become part of it. “I thought that the price per coin could double or triple, so it seemed like a solid investment. I was right about the solid investment part, but wrong about the price increase, he jokingly says.” He is now an active webdeveloper creating websites and mobile apps. And with his whopping $1.5 Million dollars we close this list with the biggest winner.
