Bought in 2009, currency’s rise in value saw small investment turn into enough to buy an apartment in a wealthy area of Oslo Bitcoin: what you need to know This article was originally published on 29 October 2013.Due to a technical fault, it has been republished here, on a new page.Norwegian man discovers $27 bitcoin investment now worth more than enough to buy an apartment.Photograph: George Frey/Getty Images Bought in 2009, currency’s rise in value saw small investment turn into enough to buy an apartment in a wealthy area of Oslo Bitcoin: what you need to know This article was originally published on 29 October 2013.The meteoric rise in bitcoin has meant that within the space of four years, one Norwegian man’s $27 investment turned into a forgotten $886,000 windfall.Kristoffer Koch invested 150 kroner ($26.60) in 5,000 bitcoins in 2009, after discovering them during the course of writing a thesis on encryption.He promptly forgot about them until widespread media coverage of the anonymous, decentralised, peer-to-peer digital currency in April 2013 jogged his memory.

Bitcoins are stored in encrypted wallets secured with a private key, something Koch had forgotten.After eventually working out what the password could be, Koch got a pleasant surprise: “It said I had 5,000 bitcoins in there.Measuring that in today’s rates it’s about NOK5m ($886,000),” Koch told NRK.Silk Road fluctuations In April 2013, the value of bitcoin peaked at $266 before crashing to a low of $50 soon after.Since then, bitcoin has seen large fluctuations in its value, most recently following the seizure of online drugs marketplace Silk Road, plummeting before jumping $30 in one day to a high of $197 in October.Koch exchanged one fifth of his 5,000 bitcoins, generating enough kroner to buy an apartment in Toyen, one of the Norwegian capital’s wealthier areas.Two ways to acquire bitcoins Customers line-up to use the world’s first ever permanent bitcoin ATM at a coffee shop in Vancouver, British Columbia.Photograph: Andy Clark/Reuters Photograph: Andy Clark / Reuters/REUTERS Typically bitcoins are bought using traditional currency from a bitcoin “exchanger”, although due to strict anti-money laundering controls, the process can can be tricky.

A user can then withdraw those bitcoins by sending them back to an exchanger like Mt Gox, the best known bitcoin exchange, in return for cash.However, bitcoin is gaining more and more traction within the physical world too.It is now possible to actually spend bitcoins without exchanging them for traditional currency first in a few British pubs, including the Pembury Tavern in Hackney, London, for instance.bitcoin qr appOn 29 October, the world’s first bitcoin ATM also went online in Vancouver, Canada, which scans a user’s palm before letting them buy or sell bitcoins for cash.ethereum logo contestA small group of hardcore users also generate extra bitcoins by “mining” for them – a process that requires computers to perform the calculations needed to make the digital currency work, in exchange for a share of the built-in inflation.bitcoin meetup india

Mining is a time-consuming and expensive endeavour due to the way the currency is designed.Each subsequent bitcoin mined is more complex than the previous one, requiring more computational time and therefore investment through the electricity and computer hardware required.In August, Germany recognised bitcoin as a “unit of account”, allowing the country to tax users or creators of the digital currencybitcoin kaufen legalStudent buys Oslo flat with $27 bitcoin stash Share this article He began mining Bitcoin in late 2009, and then in 2010, he bought 5,600 bitcoin on the then new Liberty Reserve.bitcoin hard drive rubbish dumpShare this article From our sponsors Take control of your future: get a Rich Dad Education Increased cash flow.bitcoin polska strona

Sound good to you?Maybe you need a Rich Dad Education.The Nordic way: 'We must trust each other’ Why you are paying too much to send money abroad Surrogacy in the Nordics: understanding options and expectationsVideoImageA short animated introduction about BitCoins. FOUR years ago Norwegian student Kristoffer Koch spent 150 kroner ($26.60) on a little-known internet currency called bitcoin.It was 2009 and he was working on his thesis about encryption when he came across the mysterious currency.He bought some for fun, then forgot about it.Fast-forward to April 2013, when the value of bitcoins started to soar.The internet currency received widespread media coverage, and Mr Koch remembered he had bought a few bitcoins years ago, NRK reports."Ithought to myself, didn't I have something like that?"Mr Koch said.He started searching frantically for his password, which he had encrypted.When he finally worked out the correct combination to unlock it, he found a very pleasant surprise."It

said 5000 bitcoins there.Measuring that in today's rates it's about 5 million kroner ($885,520)," he said.He cashed in about one fifth of his bitcoins, and it was enough for him to buy an apartment in Toyen, one of the richer parts of Norway's capital Oslo.His partner was initially sceptical about him spending "real money" on "fake money".She has since changed her tune."Shethinks I spend money on a bunch of crap.I buy a lot of technical little things that I never have time to use, and this was the worst of all, the fact that I was buying fake money," Mr Koch said."She says that I should be allowed to buy the things I want."BitcoinsThere are two ways to acquire them, the Herald Sun reports.The first is to buy them on an online exchange, where a person can transfer local currency, such as Australian dollars, for bitcoins.The second, and much more difficult way, is to "mine" them.This is by done by using a computer to solve a very complex equation.Once solved, the miner will receive a (virtual) handful of bitcoins.After four years, there are about 11 million bitcoins in existence, and the technology has been designed so that the number of bitcoins that can ever be mined will be exhausted at 21 million.But the currency is very volatile.