BITCOIN RUSH

SOLVING CRIME PAYS At one stage the FBI owned the world’s biggest bitcoin wallet after seizing 144 000 bitcoins while shutting down the Silk Road online black market in 2013. Last year it auctioned them off, collecting $48 million (then R600 million). A PIZZA IN A MILLION In 2010 American computer programmer Laszlo Hanyecz bought two Papa John’s pizzas from another bitcoin enthusiast in the first “real-world” bitcoin transaction. He spent 10 000 bitcoins to make his purchase, which at the time were worth roughly $41 (then R266,50). Today they’d be worth more than $96 million (R1,1 billion). GIG ECONOMY In 2009 British singer Lily Allen was offered “hundreds of thousands” of bitcoins to play a live-stream broadcast in the virtual world Second Life but she refused. Lily revealed the offer in a 2014 tweet, saying she’d replied, “As if”. She ended the tweet with, ‘#idiot #idiot’. Now 200 000 bitcoins would be worth $1,9 billion (R22,8 billion), which means Lily could have been three times richer than Madonna, who’s worth about $595 million (R7,1 billion). EXPENSIVE MISTAKE In 2013 James Howells accidentally threw away a computer hard drive containing 7 500 bitcoins. At the time they were worth about $975 000 (then R10,2 million) but now the bitcoins, sitting at the bottom of a landfill site in Newport, Wales, are worth $71 million (R852million). It’s estimated around 2,78 million bitcoin have been lost since the currency’s creation in 2009.