A student who completely forgot his meager Bitcoin investment returned to a massive fortune he would have never thought possible several years later.
Norway native Kristoffer Koch was 25 years old when he bought a few dollars’ worth of BTC for a school project back in 2009. He decided to purchase the cryptocurrency during its infancy after reading an old document written by supposed creator Satoshi Nakamoto in 2008.
He ended up buying 5,000 tokens, which, according to Divergent, ranged between $22 and $27.
“The sole purchasable items in those days were alpaca socks, thus I proceeded with my life and relinquished thoughts of this venture to instead concentrate on securing gainful employment,” he explained.
However, four years later, he decided to check his wallet after stumbling across reports revealing that the coins had skyrocketed in value.
It took Koch a while to remember the password to the cold wallet, but it was definitely worth it when he was greeted with $850,000.
That same investment is worth a lot more now, around $594.5 million.
“Not in my wildest dreams could I have imagined that they would have soared like this,” he said.
“It’s bizarre, these psychological reflexes that make us attach a value to something that doesn’t have any in itself.”
Koch chased out a fifth of his earnings in 2013 and, after paying taxes, bought himself a luxurious flat in Oslo.
If he kept the other four-fifths, which we hope he did, he would now be sitting on $475 million.
For a $22-27 investment, that’s not at all shabby.
