Most of us can only dream of stumbling into millions by accident, but for Kristoffer Koch, that dream became reality.
Back in 2009, Koch was a 25-year-old student with a curiosity for emerging tech. While researching digital currencies for a school project, he came across Bitcoin and decided to invest a modest $27, though some sources say it might have been as little as $22. At the time, it was a gamble. Bitcoin was in its infancy, and few believed it would ever be worth anything.
Inspired by Satoshi Nakamoto’s original 2008 white paper, Koch purchased 5,000 Bitcoins. But with few practical uses for the digital currency (he joked the only thing you could buy at the time was alpaca socks) he soon forgot all about it.
Fast forward four years: Koch started seeing headlines about Bitcoin’s skyrocketing value. Curious, he dug up his old digital wallet, and was stunned to find it now held roughly $850,000. And that was back in 2013.
If Koch had held onto all 5,000 Bitcoins until today, his original $27 investment would now be worth around $594.5 million, a return of roughly 22 million times his initial spend.
Of course, there was one small hurdle: accessing the funds. Like many, Koch had forgotten his wallet password. Fortunately, he managed to retrieve it and unlock his crypto fortune.
That year, he cashed out a fifth of his holdings, paid taxes, and bought a luxurious apartment in Oslo. The remaining four-fifths? If untouched, it would now be worth over $475 million.
Reflecting on the surreal turn of events, Koch told local media: “Not in my wildest dreams could I have imagined that they would have soared like this. It’s bizarre, these psychological reflexes that make us attach a value to something that doesn’t have any in itself.”
A forgotten $27 school project turned into a life-changing windfall. Not bad for a guy who just wanted to learn about Bitcoin.