"I remember these and other physical coin sales during the early days of bitcoin. At the time, they felt like a weird attempt to legitimize a virtual concept through the language of traditional currency.

"It still feels like that, to be honest. But WOW! I had no idea anyone had produced a 1000 BTC version. And I can't believe the owner never redeemed it. (According to a bitcoin wiki, there are three unopened 1000 coins, as well as two unopened 1000 BTC bars.)

"That's the thing about crypto: Every time someone talks about how the "10,000 bitcoin pizza" would be worth $500M today, they're missing the point. A very small handful of early crypto miners have held onto their piles of BTC. For most, it was impossible to resist BTC at $50, $500, or $5000, or $25,000.

"Imagine holding onto 1000BTC for more than 10 years... It's staggering.

"I have to believe that Boggs would've loved this."

Jeff is a fellow fan of "Money Artist" J.S.G. Boggs; I agree - he would have had a ball with the concept, along with that of "DeFi", or Decentralized Finance - financial products available on a public decentralized blockchain network. -Editor

"It just occurred to me that there is a Boggs echo in the way it was a news story when someone was able to buy a pizza with BTC. It's now infamous for a different reason, but at the time it was more like, "Wow someone accepted our fake internet money as currency for lunch!" ... I'm guessing a lot of those long term holders must have forgotten about it for at least some of those years.

"To help people do the impossible, one of the aspirants trying to connect traditional finance and DeFi, a company called Alliance Block, just today unveiled a 4-year "no mercy" staking pool, in which you aren't allowed access to your tokens for 4 years, but in return you double your tokens with staking rewards. It's a bet on top of a bet, an increasingly common defi model, like the old certified deposits I guess, but much better returns. "

We all know May 4th as Star Wars Day - as in "May the Fourth Be With You." May 22 is Bitcoin Pizza Day in the crypto community - the day in 2010 when early adopter Laszlo Hanyecz famously spent 10,000 BTC for two pizzas. -Editor

Those spending sprees top my wife by a mile - even the time after we remodeled our first floor, and her and our daughter drove around town firing money out of a bazooka hoovering up new rugs, lamps and wallhangings.

See another article elsewhere in this issue on how the giant stone money of Yap may have paved the way for bitcoin. -Editor