Doing This One Simple Thing Would Have Turned You Into a Bitcoin Millionaire

Here’s a staggering statistic: the number of BTC addresses worth at least $1 million has surged by 150% since the cryptocurrency raced past $20,000.

According to Glassnode, there are now 66,540 addresses that are sitting pretty in seven figures — a number that’s probably risen even further with BTC hitting $23,000.

So… why the sudden rise? Well, it’s worth remembering what was going on in the early days of Bitcoin.

Back when the blockchain first launched, miners would receive a reward of 50 BTC for every block of transactions they validated.

At the current market rate, that’s the equivalent of $1.15 million — all for 10 minutes’ work. Nice. As Glassnode’s CTO Rafael Schultze-Kraft explained on Twitter:

“All you had to do to be a millionaire today, is mine a *single* #Bitcoin block between 2009 and 2012. You had 210,000 chances to do so.”

Of course, mining has become a lot more competitive (and expensive) in recent years, with rewards being halved every four years. Now, miners receive 12.5 BTC if they’re lucky enough to validate a block — and that’s still a payday of $287,125.

Unfortunately, millions of Bitcoin have vanished forever in recent years. It’s highly possible that the funds in ome of these addresses will never be accessed because the private keys have been lost.

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