The original “OG” bitcoiners own LESS bitcoin than you think. Here’s why:

00:02 the original OG Bitcoiners own less
00:05 Bitcoin than you would think let’s talk
00:07 about why because it’s interesting so
00:10 original OG Bitcoiners had two problems
00:13 to deal with uh that you do not have to
00:15 deal with so be in some ways be thankful
00:18 that you’re not an OG Bitcoiner because
00:20 life was a lot it was it was a lot uh
00:23 scarier to or not scarier it was a lot
00:25 more uh prone to error and prone to uh
00:29 hacker in the very early days of Bitcoin
00:32 so two things that resulted in a lot of
00:34 OG Bitcoiners having a lot less Bitcoin
00:36 than you would think was exchange hacks
00:39 and uh people losing their Bitcoin or
00:43 throwing it away because it was just
00:45 worth so little that it didn’t matter so
00:47 this was a constant constant happening
00:50 between 2009 and probably 2013 and was
00:54 probably still happening up through 2016
00:58 so since I’ve bought Bitcoin starting in
01:00 2017 you really don’t I don’t think I’ve
01:03 ever encountered someone from 2017
01:05 forward that lost their Bitcoin in an
01:08 exchange hack or that lost their Bitcoin
01:11 because they threw away the private key
01:12 that just doesn’t happen anymore the
01:14 world has changed technology’s better
01:16 you know the the uh something called
01:18 seed phrases was invented uh which you
01:21 don’t have to worry about but you know
01:22 it made it a lot easier for techie
01:24 people uh to keep track of their Bitcoin
01:26 even if they want to do it all
01:27 themselves and all that sort of stuff
01:28 well none of that stuff existed in the
01:30 early days of Bitcoin and so very early
01:33 on people would go buy Bitcoin on uh
01:36 Bitcoinica or Mount Gaus or any of these
01:40 services and there was not a good way to
01:42 self-custody your Bitcoin there was
01:44 nothing like uh Bitkey which is by far
01:46 the best way and there were not
01:48 reputable exchanges like Coinbase and
01:51 River and others that were not just
01:52 going to get hacked so what happened is
01:55 people had all the you know they would
01:56 keep all their Bitcoin on uh Mount Gaus
01:59 or Bitcoin or any of these services and
02:02 then the the exchange itself would have
02:04 a major hack and lose a huge amount of
02:06 Bitcoin and they might own tens of
02:08 thousands of Bitcoin and poof it would
02:10 just be gone um so uh you don’t have to
02:13 worry about that now but that used to be
02:14 a big problem in the early days of
02:16 Bitcoin when nobody was sure how to
02:19 secure it and the technology you know
02:21 Bitcoin itself was always secure but
02:23 holding those private keys of ownership
02:26 was just the early technologies to do
02:28 that were not developed not the they
02:30 were just very early so if you are a an
02:33 OG early Bitcoiner there is a good
02:35 chance that a significant amount of your
02:37 Bitcoin got stolen in the Mount Gox hack
02:40 or Bitcoinica or any of the numerous
02:42 other exchange hacks that happened early
02:44 in Bitcoin’s life and if you didn’t get
02:46 hacked there was a very good chance that
02:48 you threw away the keys now why is that
02:50 well because people are throwing away
02:51 digital stuff all the time they just
02:53 delete stuff to free up hard drive space
02:55 they delete stuff that they’re sure is
02:57 backed up to the cloud and then later
02:58 they find out it’s not backed up to the
02:60 cloud and in the early days of Bitcoin
03:02 you know people had 100 Bitcoin and even
03:05 when it worth you know $100 they would
03:07 delete a file they would realize “Ooh
03:09 dang it that had 100 Bitcoin.” But
03:11 they’d look at the price and they’d be
03:12 like “Well it was only $100 it’s not
03:14 worth all the trouble of recovering you
03:17 know jumping through a bunch of hoops to
03:19 recover 100 Bitcoin because it’s only
03:20 worth $100 so it’s only worth $100 it’s
03:23 just not worth the trouble.”
03:27 So this happens all the time most
03:29 famously by a guy in the UK uh somewhere
03:32 in either the UK Great Britain something
03:34 like that anyway he threw away a hard
03:36 drive that had um a total of 7,800
03:40 Bitcoin on it which is uh more than
03:43 whatever 800 $900 million of Bitcoin but
03:46 at the time it got thrown away it was
03:48 worth about I think 7 or $8,000 and it
03:51 got thrown away he he realized it after
03:54 the fact um but you know at that point
03:56 the the uh the dump truck had or not the
03:59 dump truck but the trash truck um the
04:02 garbage truck whatever you want to call
04:03 it the garbage truck had left it was no
04:05 longer in his neighborhood there was no
04:07 way to track it down now obviously if
04:09 today if it was 900 million people would
04:12 have like called emergency services and
04:14 gone and camped out at the dump and gone
04:16 through every trash truck that showed up
04:18 for the next 2 weeks looking for that
04:20 hard drive but at the time it was like
04:21 $7,000 so it’s a it’s a big loss but
04:24 nobody’s going to chase the trash truck
04:26 all over the planet for $7,000 when
04:28 there’s no guarantee you’ll ever find
04:30 the trash truck that’s got your Bitcoin
04:32 hard drive in it um and again so he
04:34 didn’t Well now it’s worth you know $800
04:37 million literally $800 million and he’s
04:40 trying to buy He’s trying to buy the
04:41 entire landfill the guy is trying to buy
04:44 the entire landfill so he can go through
04:47 every piece of trash in the entire
04:49 landfill looking for one hard drive that
04:51 has the private keys to about 8,000
04:53 Bitcoin it’s crazy so but stuff like
04:56 that just doesn’t happen anymore nobody
04:58 throws away Bitcoin thinking ah it will
05:00 probably never be worth anything or you
05:03 know it’s $100 a coin but you know that
05:05 might be the end of it you know we’re
05:07 just not sure it’s going to be worth any
05:08 more than that or whatever it is like
05:09 just nobody does that or I guess back
05:11 then it was like a dollar a coin because
05:13 if it was seven or 8,000 Bitcoin and I
05:15 think the total value back then it was
05:17 like a dollar a coin or something like
05:18 that so at a dollar a coin you know a
05:20 lot of people thought well it’s probably
05:21 topped out i mean how high can it go so
05:24 two things you don’t have to worry about
05:25 are exchange hacks um well you do still
05:29 have to worry about your account getting
05:31 hacked but you generally do not have to
05:34 worry about the exchange itself getting
05:35 hacked and losing all the Bitcoin it
05:37 still does happen so it’s not a zero
05:39 risk but it went from back then to a
05:41 very high risk to the modern era which I
05:44 would characterize it as a much lower
05:46 risk uh but the other reason so other
05:48 than exchange hacks which that risk has
05:51 dropped to you know close to zero for
05:53 the exchange itself it’s still
05:54 relatively high for individual accounts
05:56 that are not properly secured but for
05:58 exchanges themselves that you know risk
05:60 has gone way down um but the other um uh
06:03 and people just don’t lose their Bitcoin
06:04 anymore because there’s safe ways to
06:06 secure it nobody keeps private keys on a
06:08 hard drive anymore that’s like totally
06:10 100% not a thing and you know things
06:13 like uh like BitKey have so many backup
06:16 options that it’s literally as long as
06:18 you have a recovery contact which they
06:20 used to call trusted contact set up um
06:22 you’re basically golden but the number
06:24 one reason early OG Bitcoiners don’t
06:26 have a ton of Bitcoin is because they
06:28 sold it because they add it and they got
06:31 it for next to nothing and then it got
06:33 it went up 10x in value and they thought
06:35 hey there’s no telling what will happen
06:37 with this in the long term and they
06:39 cashed out 1,000 Bitcoin and bought a
06:41 house or they bought they cashed out
06:43 10,000 Bitcoin and bought two pizzas uh
06:47 Llo Hinek who did that did it four times
06:50 it’s either three or four times that he
06:52 sold 10,000 Bitcoin in exchange for two
06:54 Papa John’s pizzas um and he was just
06:56 trying it was the first commercial real
06:58 world transaction nobody knew what the
06:60 price of a Bitcoin was because it had
07:01 never been exchanged for you know for a
07:04 real world item like two Papa John’s
07:06 pizzas which at the time was about $40
07:08 um so anybody in the world could have
07:10 exchanged you know $40 for 10,000
07:13 Bitcoin and he just decided hey whoever
07:15 will buy me two Papa John’s Pizza I’ll
07:17 give 10,000 Bitcoin uh same way I give
07:20 away like $30 of Bitcoin um or you know
07:23 he was giving away you know or he wasn’t
07:25 giving he was exchanging it but that’s
07:26 the number one way you know people who
07:28 got it for a penny they sold their
07:30 bitcoin for 10 cents people who bought
07:32 it at 10 cents sold their bitcoin for a
07:34 dollar people who bought bitcoin for a
07:35 dollar sold it at $10 people who bought
07:38 it at $10 sold it at $100 people who
07:40 bought it at $100 sold it at a $1,000
07:43 you know on and on and on everybody just
07:46 gets this irresistible urge when they
07:48 have an investment that to uh sell it
07:50 when it’s way
07:52 Well in some ways that’s good right
07:53 because it means Bitcoin has distributed
07:55 itself to now somewhere in in the
07:58 ballpark of 400 million people around
07:60 the world if those original OG
08:02 Bitcoiners had never sold any of their
08:04 Bitcoin to buy a house or a car pay off
08:07 a student loan whatever it is that they
08:09 sold it for or exchange it for two Papa
08:11 John’s pizzas for 10,000 Bitcoin as the
08:14 very first commercial transaction for
08:15 Bitcoin for something in the real world
08:17 uh other than just you know swapping it
08:19 in and out of you know US dollars or
08:21 something you know if nobody had done
08:23 that the Bitcoin would all be owned by
08:25 the OGs and the reason it’s not is
08:28 because they did with your with their
08:30 Bitcoin exactly what you will probably
08:32 do with your Bitcoin which is if your
08:34 Bitcoin makes you 10 times more wealthy
08:38 I promise you you’re going to find it
08:40 irresistible to convert some of that
08:42 wealth into things that improve the life
08:44 of you and your family and that’s good
08:46 there’s nothing wrong with that but uh I
08:47 often hear people say “Wow I wish I was
08:49 an OG Bitcoiner.” Because if I was back
08:52 then I would have been super careful not
08:54 to throw away my private keys i would
08:56 have been super careful not to keep my
08:58 Bitcoin on an exchange and I never would
09:01 have sold Bitcoin that I bought for a
09:03 dollar for $100 and let’s be honest you
09:07 and I absolutely positively would have
09:08 done that so let’s not pretend that
09:12 somehow we are so much more geniuses
09:14 than the OG Bitcoiners that we never
09:17 would have sold it because we would have
09:18 known it was going to more than 100,000
09:20 a coin nobody knew Bitcoin was going to
09:22 more than 100,000 a coin i mean nobody
09:25 knew that nobody could predict the the
09:27 adoption of Bitcoin so the same is true
09:30 now somewhere when you buy Bitcoin right
09:32 now for $105,000 a coin that means
09:36 someone somewhere is selling Bitcoin for
09:38 $105,000 a coin that they probably
09:40 bought for $10,500 a coin or $10,50 a
09:44 coin and they’re up 10x and they’re
09:47 thinking “Hey there’s something I want
09:49 to buy for my family.” And uh so anyway
09:51 that is the journey that is why Bitcoin
09:53 is uh has beautifully distributed itself
09:56 all over the world and uh and it’s why
09:58 it’s available for the cheap price of
09:60 $105,000
10:02 right now have a great day everyone