A yellow piece of paper with the text “Buy Bitcoin” that appeared in a photo behind the then chairman of the US central bank, Janet Yellen, in 2017 has been sold for 16 bitcoin (more than 1 million dollars). The buyer identifies himself as “Justin” or “Squirrekkywrath” and won the auction that ran for one week on the Scarce City platform.
Congratulations to Justin, A.K.A. Squirrekkywrath, winner of the #BitcoinSignGuy auction for 16 #BTC. 🏆@tpacchia Get this man a Whale! 🐳 pic.twitter.com/DPpczcEzkJ
— PUBKEY (@PubKey_NYC) April 24, 2024
Buy Bitcoin
The piece of paper was given to Justin by Christian Langalis, the man who held up the now legendary work during a hearing at the House Financial Services Committee in July 2017.
Langalis was removed from the room after holding up the piece of paper. Not because he wrote something about bitcoin, but because it is forbidden to hold things up during these hearings in the first place.
A funny fact is that the bitcoin price shot up 3.7 percent after the piece of paper appeared on television. The price reached the level of $2,418 at the time.
After Scarce City’s fee of 15 percent, Langalis is left with a nice $875,000 (or 13.6 bitcoin) from the auction.
In 2019, the same Langalis created and sold 21 replicas of the paper, which sold for an average of 0.8 bitcoin each. That wasn’t much at the time, but today it amounts to about $50,000.
What will Langalis do with the capital?
According to Bloomberg, Langalis plans to use the money to finance a Bitcoin software project.
Bloomberg also reports that Langalis was an intern at the US central bank at the time. Ultimately, the internship will not have gone so well for him.
There’s a chance his internship ended with him holding up the piece of paper. However, Langalis probably had so much confidence in bitcoin at that moment that it did not bother him much how his internship would end.
He was right about that, as evidenced by this auction, among other things. Although of course anything can still happen with the price.
Source: https://bitcoinmagazine.nl/nieuws/legendarisch-buy-bitcoin-papier-verkoopt-voor-1-miljoen
