In 2011, when he was living in Switzerland, he was given the 7,002 bitcoins by an early Bitcoin fanatic as a reward for making an animated video, “What is Bitcoin?,” which introduced many people to the technology.

That year, he lost the digital keys to the wallet holding the Bitcoin. Since then, as Bitcoin’s value has soared and fallen and he could not get his hands on the money, Thomas has soured on the idea that people should be their own bank and hold their own money.

“This whole idea of being your own bank — let me put it this way: Do you make your own shoes?” Thomas said. “The reason we have banks is that we don’t want to deal with all those things that banks do.”

Guy seems pretty down to earth. He didn't do any trading for those bitcoins, he was given them as payment for labor.

For reference, 7,002 BTC in 2011 was anywhere from $3500-$7000 depending on what month he was paid.

Also "reward for making an animated video" is a weird way of saying "payment for labor". Guess wages are going to start being considered rewards now...

I'm glad I used all the bitcoins I've ever owned to purchase drugs online, no need to stress about imaginary value I might have stored on some hard drive.

You know, this brings up a really interesting point about bitcoin that I'd never thought of before. As far as I remember, the number of bitcoins that can be generated is finite, as the mining algorithm becomes more complex until it is impossible to solve. It makes sense in theory; you don't want bitcoins to be generated forever because they would constantly be depreciating in value.

But, on the other side of the coin (heh), bitcoins can be permanently lost. Again, as far as I know, once a Bitcoin has been lost on a physical drive, it can never be recovered. which would mean, that at some point not only will the number of bitcoins in the world stop increasing, it will actually begin to decrease, because there will always be accidents where people lose hard drives, forget passwords, etc.

So doesn't that mean that bitcoin won't exist forever? Unless they divide them into smaller and smaller pieces, which I think also has a limit, at some point the number of bitcoins will decrease until there aren't enough left.