It’s absolutely amazing that there is over $1.3B in Casascius coins not redeemed

At current pricing the unredeemed Casascius coins are valued at over $1.3 billion dollars.

Over 1/3 of that is in 1000 bitcoin coins and bars.

I find it amazing for a number of reasons. It seems pretty clear that Mike Caldwell was legit. More value has been redeemed than hasn’t. That means redemption works. There’s also been no claims I’ve ever heard of that it didn’t work, meaning Mike didn’t keep any keys.

Even a 0.1 Casascius coin represents $2600+ dollars. Unlike a hardware wallet where you can backup your seed, each coin is a single point of failure. I’d have to imagine the larger ones are in safes, but I still wonder how a plastic hologram would hold up in a fire, even in a safe. I can’t imagine owning one of the remaining 1,000 BTC coins/bars and being comfortable protecting that value. Of course, even with my DCA, I’ll never have that much net worth.

In 2011, when the coins were first produced, bitcoin peaked at $30. On the one hand, I can imagine some of those early Casascius coins being lost because they weren’t worth much, but on the other hand, I can’t imagine someone buying one in 2011 who wasn’t a true believer.

I’m still amazed $1.3B is locked up in unredeemed ones.