Early Bitcoin Investor Cashes in on Casascius Gold Bar for $10 Million

According to BlockBeats, an early Bitcoin investor known as 'JohnGalt' on the BitcoinTalk forum has successfully redeemed a Casascius physical Bitcoin gold bar, which he had held for 13 years. This redemption involved extracting the private keys for 100 Bitcoins, resulting in a profit of approximately $10 million. JohnGalt revealed that he initially purchased the gold bar in 2012 for $500, at a time when Bitcoin was valued at around $5 per coin and had little interest from the public. He admitted in a post that he had attempted to sell the gold bar multiple times over the years, even considering auctioning it off, but faced challenges due to valuation disputes and trust issues, preventing a successful transaction. With Bitcoin's recent surge past $100,000, JohnGalt decided that holding onto a physical asset worth "eight figures" posed too high a risk, prompting him to extract the 100 Bitcoins. It is noteworthy that due to the shared private key mechanism between Bitcoin Cash (BCH) and Bitcoin, a sharp-eyed individual managed to withdraw $40,000 worth of BCH using the private key visible in a photo before JohnGalt could claim it. This withdrawal was completed in just nine minutes.