5,000 bitcoins for US$27. A man from Norway experienced it. This is the story of how a former student from Norway unintentionally became a Bitcoin millionaire.

In 2009, Kristoffer Koch wanted to write his thesis on the topic of encryption. During his research, he stumbled upon a new cryptocurrency on the Internet: Bitcoin. To test how it worked, he decided to put some money into it without fuss. With the equivalent of 27 U.S. dollars, the Norwegian bought 5,000 Bitcoin. He finished his thesis and forgot about the bitcoins

The price stops for no one

While the coins lay dormant and Koch did other things, the Bitcoin phenomenon gradually gained more public interest. The following year, Laszlo Hanyzec bought two pizzas for 10,000 BTC and entered crypto history with Pizza Day. In 2011, the infamous darknet marketplace Silk Road went online and helped the cryptocurrency gain a dubious notoriety that still clings to the crypto sector today.

About a year later, the first halving took place, lowering the reward for miners from 50 BTC to 25 BTC per block. This was a drastic supply shortage, which is always accompanied by a rise in the Bitcoin price. Then, in 2013, a few crypto enthusiasts set up the first Bitcoin ATM in Vancouver, Canada. And the Bitcoin exchange rate? It just kept going. While the Bitcoin price was just a few cents in 2011, it reached its all-time high of US$230 on April 9, 2013. Kristoffer Koch could no longer avoid the media attention.

Kristoffer Koch rediscovers his coins

Koch, years after the fact, remembered again. Hadn't he bought a few bitcoins while writing his thesis? He described his dry reaction to the Norwegian newspaper "NRK" as follows: "Didn't I have a few lying around" he thought.

And indeed: he had a few more. He searched for the passwords and finally found his BTC. His coins were now worth US$886,000. His investment had increased by 3 million percent. The coins would now be worth US$133 million. It is not known how much Kristoffer sold his BTC for, but we make a reasonable assumption that he did not think long about it.