Former Bitcoin developer sold coins worth about $1.2 billion at $5 apiece

Former Bitcoin developer Martti Malmi has said that he sold 55,000 BTC by 2012. The current value of those coins now exceeds $1.2 billion.

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I’d be a billionaire now if I hadn’t sold the 55,000 bitcoins I mined on my laptop in 2009-2010 way too early (mostly before 2012). That is regretful, but then again, with the early bitcoiners we set in motion something greater than personal gain.

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— Martti Malmi (@marttimalmi) December 18, 2020

“I would be a billionaire today if I hadn’t sold 55,000 BTC mined on my laptop in 2009-2010 too early—mostly before 2012,” Malmi said.

According to him, in 2010 he worked on launching a now-defunct exchange called Bitcoin Exchange.

“There wasn’t really such thing as an exchange rate back then, and I ran the trading platform largely as a Bitcoin faucet, not a business, and as a result I ended up with 30,000 BTC less.”

The former developer noted that he never thought about making money from Bitcoin:

“It happened by accident, as a side product when Satoshi asked me to keep my node running so others could connect to the network.”

His Bitcoin holdings were enough to buy a one-bedroom apartment near Helsinki.

“This is an achievement for a 22-year-old guy who never had a lot of money. Probably now it’s the most expensive studio in the world, but at least it’s more than two pizzas,” Malmi writes.

Later he wanted to hold onto the coins, but after losing his job in 2012 he was forced to sell most of them at around $5 apiece.

“This is regrettable, but again the early Bitcoin enthusiasts got something greater than personal gain.”

Malmi added that he drew a few lessons from the experience:

“Money matters— the more you have, the better. However you don’t need to be rich to live a good life. And you don’t live forever, and striving for something bigger gives life meaning.”

At the time of writing, Bitcoin trades at about $22,860.

Earlier Ethereum co-founder Vitalik Buterin said that in 2013 he sold half of the bitcoins he had, to avoid going broke.

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