NUS student humblebrags he's a millionaire as he rediscovers his stash of Bitcoins

He can drop out of school if he is really holding on to it.

Sulaiman Daud | August 31, 2017, 03:11 PM

The value of one Bitcoin has surged in recent months on the back of speculation and intense mining.

It is today worth around S$6,270 (US$4,612) per Bitcoin.

Such skyrocketing valuations can effectively change the fortunes of anyone who has a sizeable holding of the virtual currency, which was essentially worth less than a cent barely seven years ago.

One lucky NUS student

For one lucky National University of Singapore student, it appears almost too good to be true.

Because in a post on the anonymous NUSWhispers Facebook group that traditionally includes a lot of sh*t posting, the person who claims to be an NUS student said:

In case you can't see it, here's what the post says:

"I was one of those who bought a small amount of bitcoin many years ago just to play with it, found out that bitcoin was pretty useless at the time, and promptly forgot where I kept the .dat file. I only recently found it in an old backup. Right now it is worth about S$2m, and I haven't told anyone about it, including friends and family. What should I do? Is it even a good idea to tell anyone? I am currently year 3 CS."

The poster claims to be an NUS Computer Science Year 3 student, who bought Bitcoins in the early years before the trend took off, during a time when the virtual currency was still useless and worthless.

He is now sitting on S$2 million worth of Bitcoins due to the meteoric rise in valuation.

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How does the math check out?

Assuming the poster is a third-year male NUS student, he would be about 23 years old this year.

Pre-hype Bitcoin era was between 2010 and 2012, where prices crept up from less than one-quarter of a cent to tens of dollars before increasing further.

This means the poster bought the Bitcoins in the useless era when he was between 16 and 18 years old -- which would make him a very early adopter of a very iffy piece of technology that was created and marketed early on based on libertarian ideology championing a currency devoid of a central authority.

For him to be holding on to S$2 million worth of Bitcoins, he would have about 320 Bitcoins in his wallet.

What's Bitcoin?

Bitcoin is a digital crypto-currency created by the mysterious Satoshi Nakamoto -- believed to be a person or a group of people -- which went online in 2009.

Bitcoins are popular in online transactions, as they can be used to make anonymous purchases. Also, the blockchain technology associated with Bitcoin makes such transactions verifiable and secure.

Not being tied to any one country, they are also free from international regulations. Bitcoin is also gaining popularity with small businesses because unlike credit cards, there are no fees attached when a customer pays with Bitcoin.

If this isn't a joke, then some guy just won his own personal digital lottery.

Gif from Tenor.

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