When he finally remembered his investment, he logged in to find a fortune.
Norwegian man Kristoffer Koch was just 25 when Bitcoin was a brand-new currency that no one really knew about or understood yet.
Despite the risk, and being teased by his girlfriend for the frivolous purchase, Koch bought 5,000 Bitcoins for $22.
Over the years, Koch forgot about the investment and went on with his life.
Behind the scenes, the value of Bitcoin was surging.
By the time he remembered his $22 investment, four years had passed.
When he logged back in to check it out, the 29-year-old’s crypto wallet held a fortune.
In his crypto wallet, Koch now had a life-changing USD $850,000.
“Not in my wildest dreams could I have imagined that they would have soared like this,” he told local media in Norway.
“It’s bizarre, these psychological reflexes that make us attach a value to something that doesn’t have any in itself.”
After discovering his not-so-mini fortune, Koch used about a fifth of it to pay taxes and buy a flat in Oslo.
The rest of it, he sensibly left where it was and is now worth even more.
While it sounds like a dream, it almost turned into a nightmare for the Norwegian when he couldn’t remember his password to the encrypted wallet.
Luckily after a few failed attempts, he finally got it.
But not everyone has enjoyed the same luck.
Stefan Thomas has found himself in a similar predicament.
Thomas has an incredible $240 million in Bitcoins locked away in his crypto wallet, but unlike Koch, he’s had no luck remembering his password.
This man has just 2 guesses to recover 0m in bitcoin
justmoon / X
The German-born programmer stored his Bitcoin on a hard drive that gave him 10 guesses to figure out the password before it encrypted itself and locked him out forever.
To this day, he has just two guesses left to figure out his decade-old password before losing his fortune.