Bitcoin Sign Guy sells the Bitcoin sign

1:05 PM • Apr 25, 2024

Christian Langalis, colloquially known as the ‘Bitcoin Sign Guy,’ has decided to auction off the piece of paper on which he wrote ‘Buy Bitcoin,’ and held up behind Janet Yellen in 2017 during a House Financial Services Committee.

The former Cato Institute intern, who now works on projects on decentralized personal server platform Urbit, stated, “When Bitcoiners ask me about the sign, I tell them, ‘you’d have done the same in my seat.’”

According to a Bloomberg article, Langalis turned down a private five-BTC offer in the hopes that the auction would fetch a higher price. His gamble seems to have paid off, with the sale amounting to 16 BTC — over a million dollars at the time of sale and 220% more than the private offer.

One bidder appeared to briefly misclick a bid, rocketing the price to 100 BTC before they corrected their bid down to 10 BTC. The anonymous winner of the Bitcoin sign went by the username ‘Squirrekkywrath.’

The note is described as being ‘hastily drawn on a yellow legal pad,’ and ‘one of few widely-recognized physical Bitcoin artifacts, given Bitcoin’s virtual nature’ by the auction house. The auction house requires all individuals placing bids to deposit 1% of their bitcoin bid as collateral.

Additionally, the sign is characterized as ‘Ink Drawing on Legal Pad’ and the auction winner may select a certificate of authenticity in the form of their choosing, including a paper certificate or a bitcoin ordinal.

Langalis earned almost 17 bitcoins from a series of replica editions that he sold in 2019. He says he plans to use the bitcoin earned from the auction to work on current cryptocurrency projects.

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