An Early Bitcoin Investor Unlocks 100 Bitcoins from a Physical Bitcoin Bar After 13 Years, Earning Over $10 Million in Profit

BlockBeats News, July 12 — According to a certain exchange, as Bitcoin has repeatedly hit new highs recently, early Bitcoin investor and BitcoinTalk forum user "JohnGalt" has successfully redeemed a Casascius physical Bitcoin bar he had held for 13 years, extracting the 100 Bitcoin private keys stored within and realizing a profit of approximately $10 million.

JohnGalt stated that he originally purchased the bar in 2012 for $500, when each Bitcoin was worth only about $5 and there was little interest in the cryptocurrency. In his post, he admitted that over the years he had tried multiple times to sell the bar, even considering auctioning it off, but was repeatedly thwarted by valuation disputes and trust issues, making it impossible to close a deal. Now, with Bitcoin surpassing $100,000, JohnGalt felt that continuing to hold a physical asset worth "eight figures in USD" was too risky, which finally prompted him to extract the 100 Bitcoins.

It is worth noting that, since BCH and Bitcoin use the same private key mechanism, before JohnGalt could extract the BCH, an observant user quickly used the private key visible in the photo to withdraw $40,000 worth of BCH in just nine minutes.