A Bitcoin holder, hodling over $1 billion worth of bitcoin is now reportedly dead leaving behind his virtual financial holdings. Guess he took hodl till I die literally. Bitcoin is the most expensive and popular cryptocurrency right now going for as much as 36,358 dollars at the time of the writing of this article. The currency has taken a lot of hits recently but is still a viable investment in every crypto enthusiast’s eye.
The Billionaire bitcoin owner who died was Mircea Popescu. The bitcoin pioneer was reported to own over $1 billion worth of cryptocurrency. This made him one of Bitcoin’s single largest holders. Reports say that he died off the coast of Costa Rica by drowning. The death was reported by Teletica.com, a Spanish publication that reported that a foreigner had drowned at Playa Hermosa de Garabito, at Puntarenas, Costa Rica.
The report described the foreigner as a 41-year-old man of Polish origin. Mircea Popescu was a well-renowned name in Romania and he has been described as an entrepreneur, blogger, and bitcoin maximalist. Many viewed him as a pioneer in the cryptocurrency scene. He even started MPEx, a security exchange for bitcoin. Rumors of Popescu’s death were already circulating in the crypto crowd before it was confirmed.
Many are wondering what will happen to Popescu’s holdings and so are we. But that is something that his next of kin or his lawyer or whatever will decide and handle. Little was known about the man anyways. Apart from blogging on Trilema and the dedication he showed to the bitcoin network in general. He even promised to dump over one million bitcoins if the block sizes were adjusted.
He also showed support for open-source systems. When the open-source operating system Open BSD ran into funding issues, it was Popescu who donated around $20,000 to the non-profit foundation behind the project back in 2014. Most of what he said on the network was usually taken in a bad light and his threat of dumping 1 million bitcoins earned him the title of Father of Bitcoin Toxicity.
Well, his warning did work as the network’s use of 1MB block sizes remained unchanged. While being one of the biggest bitcoin holders out there, Popescu was also the biggest supporter of cryptocurrency in general. His death will be mourned by every crypto investor out there.