Let’s note that the idea of long-term Bitcoin investing does seem attractive. At least since its launch, the cryptocurrency has been steadily outperforming classic investment vehicles in terms of returns. Here’s a detailed table of BTC’s year-on-year growth against other assets.

Returns on Bitcoin and other assets by year

As you can see, the average annual return on Bitcoin as an investment since 2011 is 230 percent. Meanwhile, the cumulative figure is in the millions of percent at all. As such, one can assume that the author’s idea will really make his descendants rich. Here are the details of the scheme.

The longest-running crypto-investment

The city library, which is home to Optimal-Dentistador, recently ran an amusing competition. Under its terms, those who wished to do so could leave a letter in the local archive for 100 years for future generations.

A user of the social platform Reddit wrote down his private key and cryptocurrency wallet address on paper, put it in an envelope and gave it to the archive, which would not open the contents of the envelope until a hundred years later. In a brief interview with Cointelegraph, the crypto-enthusiast noted that he put 0.003 BTC, or about $100 at current cryptocurrency exchange rates, into the wallet.


As a reminder, a private key is a unique combination of letters and symbols that unlocks the contents of an address. A private key allows you to sign transactions with the cryptocurrency in your account and thus dispose of it. It is also used to generate a public key. The latter is the address to which coins are sent. And while the public key can be shared without any problems, the private key must only be known by the owner of the address. Otherwise, its cryptocurrencies can be stolen.


What will the price of Bitcoin be in 2122?

Here is a relevant quote regarding this idea.

Under the terms of the event, you could write something like a letter, a poem or a diary that would be kept for a hundred years. If you write some personal information on the envelope, they will try to find some living relatives to give them the contents of the item in storage.


Accordingly, in this case, these coins are not likely to be lost. They will simply be accessed a hundred years later by some descendant of today's social network user.


A comment thread on the post noted that while 0.003 BTC doesn’t look like much now, a hundred years from now that amount of cryptocurrency could become a fortune. As we know already in 2122 the amount of miners’ reward for mining block will be only 0.00000019 BTC, while now the amount is 6.25 BTC per block. If you compare these rates and extrapolate the present numbers to the future, in 100 years time 0.003 BTC will be evaluated as 97 thousand BTC today by its rarity. And that is the equivalent of $4 billion.


This takes into account the rarity of new bitcoins, which become fewer every 210,000 blocks or about once every four years. This is a phenomenon called halving, which halves miners' reward per block. Consequently, the amount of new BTCs is decreasing, though the total number of coins is still growing. This will continue until 2140, when Bitcoin will reach its supply limit of 21 million coins.

We believe that this estimate is not entirely fair, as it equates new bitcoins with existing ones. Still, there are 18.95 million BTCs in circulation right now, which is most of them. They will exist for the next hundred years as well, so Bitcoin is unlikely to become rarer in the face of declining issuance. At least fully.


Comment from Reddit on bitcoin value calculations

In addition, these approximate calculations will become a reality if the Bitcoin concept “lives up” to 2122 and is very popular around the world. Be that as it may, the author of the idea alerted his family to the idea, so his future descendants are obliged to keep the envelope information.


We think the cryptocurrency enthusiast's idea could be very lucrative once implemented. Of course, the author himself can hardly expect to interact with these coins, but his descendants will definitely enjoy it. It is therefore now up to the library staff to preserve this important data for a reasonably long period of time.