JohnGalt, a senior member on Bitcointalk, revealed that he has been holding a 100 BTC Casascius Bitcoin bar for over 13 years. He bought the bar for just $500 in 2012 at the time when Bitcoin was selling at $5.
Casascius Bitcoin bars date back to 2011, during the early stages of Bitcoin. They were physical metal bars created by Mike Caldwell under the project name “Casascius,” with a private key hidden under a tamper-evident hologram containing a specific BTC value.
On May 13, 2025, JohnGalt explained in his post on Bitcointalk how he avoided selling the Bitcoin bar over the years. He wrote, “I didn’t want to redeem it, though. To me, a physical Bitcoin that hasn’t been redeemed feels like it’s worth more than just the money. I did try to sell it a few times, but it’s hard selling something that valuable, and you really can’t trust just anyone.”
However, feeling the pressure of holding such a valuable item, he decided to redeem the bar, which is now worth over $10 million. In his statement, he said, “Now that it’s worth over $10 million, I knew I couldn’t keep just sitting on it. So, yeah… even though I was kinda unsure, I finally redeemed it today.”
The transaction was confirmed on-chain, and he shared the transaction link along with his post.
While sharing the news, a user on the thread noticed that JohnGalt had revealed his private key in an image after peeling off the hologram on the Bitcoin bar. They asked whether he had redeemed Bitcoin forks like Bitcoin Cash (BCH) controlled by the same key. JohnGalt confirmed that he had already swept these assets, worth over $40,000, just nine minutes before posting.
JohnGalt has received admiration across the crypto community, as this marks one of the largest physical Bitcoin redemptions to date. Although he has redeemed the BTC, he confirmed that he will not be selling the redeemed Bitcoin bar.
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