Bitcoin Winners
A lot of people have become Bitcoin Winners either through their own foresight in recognising the potential of cryptocurrencies, by working hard at accruing bitcoins or sometimes by pure luck. These are some of the biggest winners.
50 Cent, the rapper
Rapper 50 Cent included bitcoin as a payment option for one of his music albums back in 2014, only to completely forget about his investment until quite recently.
He became the first figure from the music industry to allow bitcoin as payments for his ‘Animal Ambition’ album in 2014, reportedly earning an estimated 700 bitcoins in album sales back then. One bitcoin was worth roughly $650 when the album launched, resulting in approximately $455,000 of sales at that time.
50 Cent has admitted to forgetting about the bitcoin he made from the album sales, and that it just sat untouched in his account for years. It was an investment he has only recently rediscovered and, in today’s market, those 700 bitcoins are now worth around $7,770,000 following a surge in the cryptocurrency’s value, specifically in 2016.
It hasn’t been made clear where 50 Cent has stored his bitcoins, whether it’s in an exchange or a wallet, or whether he plans to sell them or keep them as an investment.
18-year-old, Jeremy Sturdivant
The first bitcoin transactions took place between members of the original bitcoin forum. However, the first known commercial transaction was facilitated via a pizza fan in England.
Laszlo Hanyecz, a programmer in Jacksonville, Florida, put out a message on the 22nd May 2010 asking if anyone would sell him a couple of pizzas in return for bitcoins. He wrote, “You can make the pizza yourself and bring it to my house or order it for me from a delivery place, but what I’m aiming for is getting food delivered in exchange for bitcoins”
Jeremy Sturdivant was the first to accept the 10,000 BTC offered and then promptly telephoned Papa John’s back in the USA to place the order for two pizzas using their regular credit card.
At the time, that valued a bitcoin at around $0.003.
Feeling left out or jealous? Then for some schadenfreude take a read of Bitcoin Losers.