Forum user claimed turning 50,000 euros into a million with bitcoin

351 bitcoins to multiply 50,000 euros by twenty

Can an asset multiply a private investor's initial stake by twenty and remain an unknown over a decade later? In 2013, a forum user claimed to have turned 50,000 euros into over a million in eight months by buying bitcoin. Alongside the figure, they left a written prediction: the digital currency would reach $100 million. Everything was recorded as a witness, with the warning that the original bet was published days before bitcoin crashed from $266 to $50, and just after another 30% collapse.

According to their own accounting, they held 351.01789512 bitcoins. The mix of trinc and luck, they admitted, would be the external diagnosis. They added a detail: public treasury could wait seated regarding their capital gains. In 2013, that sounded like bragging.

Is bitcoin a store of value or a digital tulip?

Beneath the figure, the old dispute. One side argued bitcoin was merely a recharged Dutch tulip: an asset with no intrinsic value whose price depends on the buyer's faith. The argument — money is worth it by law and custom, not by what it is — was returned as is: if the dollar is worth it by faith, so is bitcoin, and it doesn't even serve as a napkin. The discussion tangled without exit, while the green bill recalls in its own text that it is legal tender for all public and private debt, and no one is obliged to accept bitcoin.

On the other side, the monetary thesis. Interest rate manipulation, increase in the money supply, credit expansion, perpetual refinancing, unpayable state debt, pension schemes as pyramids, bank injections at the taxpayer's expense. An undisputed winner, the publication summarized. The question, never closed, is whether bitcoin is that winner or merely a temporary refuge.

Amidst the crossfire appears a nuance cited rarely: gold, as unfalsifiable as bitcoin and used for millennia, would have become obsolete for not serving as a computerized accounting entry. Bitcoin, by contrast, is born digital.

The problem of converting 300 bitcoins into euros

A practical question resurfaced without answer: where to exchange bitcoins for euros without the operation ending in a tax office. Converting a large position into money implied friction, risk, and vigilance. The process, according to the forum user's account, was laborious, tedious, and dangerous: first the antiestéticar of fraud when buying by transfer, then when selling, always with a nagging suspicion. Liquidity, they said, was the invention's Achilles' heel.

The quotation that gave partial reason

Time resolved part of the enigma. Bitcoin survived its crashes. On February 19, 2020, it marked $10,172.34; on March 13 of that year, in full panic, it touched $4,454.06. On November 10, 2021, it signed its absolute maximum: $68,596.52. Three years after the pre-pandemic peak, on February 19, 2023, it traded at $24,483.70, a 16.98% annual accumulated return. Volatile, yes. Profitable in the long term, also, according to the forum user who trinc it. Those who held on did so in exchange for years of rollercoaster rides.

Managing the position or letting it sleep

The other great controversy: hold or move? A forum user argues that someone who sold near $1,000 and rebought at $500 would have doubled their bitcoins. With a simple moving average crossover, it was argued, one would have earned more than holding from $0.01. The rebuttal is equally solid: in a bubble, no one knows where the ceiling is until it has passed, and those who sold at $13 expecting to rebuy cheaper were left out. Having endurance is not the same as having luck, but the result resembles it.

The trail left by the wallet

The movement of funds proved the most eloquent evidence. There were transfers of hundreds of bitcoins in 2017. A test transfer of 1.20150200 bitcoins was exhibited as verification that the address was the promised one, although entering a public address, some warned, does not prove ownership; that amount would be around €56,728 today. The wallet ultimately consolidated into a single address. Lost along the way, according to circulating calculations, was a Stellar Lumen promotion that for 1,000 bitcoins would have been worth about €800,000. No one bothered to look at it.

And the star prediction — $100 million per bitcoin — never arrived. The one for $10,000 came late but sure. The one who signed the bet with 351 bitcoins lost their trail. The asset, no.