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