Found Bitcoins I thought i'd sold years ago. WWyD

[TheWhalrus]

Hi folks,

Not coming on here to gloat or anything...i'd like some anonymous advice on a genuine dilemma. I apologize in advance for posting something about a large sum of money when many are struggling financially just now.

So, about 7-8 years ago I used bitcoins as a way of converting money from Japanese Yen to UK pounds. At the time I was working in Japan and the banks all charged crazy money to convert to pounds, so i bought bitcoins with yen and sold them for pounds instead. This was back when bitcoins were worth about $500.

Anyway, I was checking the hardrive of a laptop i've had since then, and found about 2.5 bitcoins (BTC) that i didn't sell (I was sure I sold them all). If i sell these now, I would likely get more than £100k for them.

Moving forward to my current financial situation, we're reasonably comfortable and have two white collar incomes and a small child. We might well buy ourselves a house in the next five years (we live in Germany where renting is much more common) and currently rent a reasonably comfortable flat in a nice-ish area for an affordable price. I also have some inheritance and other savings, so could pay a fair chunk towards the house without having to sell the BTC if I don't want to.

I should also add that i've not told DP about this yet. I intend to, although i'm still not sure when and how. She probably won't approve and will insist I sell them immediately.

With this in mind, should I:

a. ) Tell DP and insist on not selling the BTC now, but maybe sell them when we want to buy a house.
b. ) Tell DP and sell them at a time of my choosing
c. ) Tell DP and sell them now
d. ) Not tell DP and sit on them until we really need the money for something else or otherwise retire early (if current value projections are accurate).
e. ) Keep them for DD.
f. ) Giver the lot to charity and forget about it.

At the moment i'm minded to keep them. The initial investment on my part was definitely money I can afford to lose, so I feel I might as well keep them at least until we buy a house, and possibly longer than that even.

All opinions welcome here.

Congrats!

First of all I would defo tell DP, assuming the relationship is secure.

I personally would not sell them, but you do you.

I wpuld very strongly advise you not to sell all of them. Even if you do just want to have the cash, keep behind at least 0.003 btc each and a similar amount for any children (existing or planned).

If you are going to keep them you need them secured. The hard drive of a laptop is not secure storage, but it does have the advantage that you have your private key and/or seed phrase.

The private key looks like a long string of numbers and letters
The seed phrase will be either 12 or 24 words.

If you are going to keep them where they are, I would strongly suggest that you find that key/phrase and copy it onto a piece of paper (do not take a picture or copy and paste it, this needs to kept offline) and store that paper somewhere very safe.

However I would recommend that you get yourself a hardware wallet (Trezor and Ledger are the most common) and transfer the btc there. Again store your seed phrase somewhere very safe. Depending on your relationship you might want to set up a 2 of 2 multisig (so that neither of you can spend them without the other's approval).

A last word of warning - you are lucky, not a financial genius. Don't start doing daft things like trying to double your money by selling them for the latest memecoin, or trading with 20x leverage.

If you feel the temptation, set aside some of it as "fun money" that you can play around crypto with (and boy is it fun, there is a whole world out there waiting for you , there are DAOs, there are NFTs, there are L2s, there are smart contracts) to explore.

You don't have to do anything immediately, do some reading before you do anything, -understand what you have and, finally, congrats!

Suggested start point
bitcoin.org/en/

In a similar situation, although to be fair I did tell my DH that I was buying them years ago - he's not mentioned them since, so I guess he's forgot or assumed I lost them. Anyway, I am doing a mix of d) and e). I plan to sell some within a few months to buy a property, but keep some for the dc's future. I am not going to remind DH that I have them until I'm ready to sell, because he's quite risk averse, and would question my strategy.

Since you already have your inheritance and savings, I certainly wouldn't sell them all right now, but perhaps just a small amount. I'd probably tell your DP if you think she'd be upset if you hadn't told her (I don't think my DH will be that bothered, he'll just be glad we have the money). Before you do anything, do your research into hardware wallets, taxes, documentation, and crypto market sentiment/analysis.

Just don't lose them like that guy...

Think of it as good fortune.

I can't actually imagine a situation in which I discover I have £100k suddenly available and I don't tell DH. It does speak to something a bit odd in your relationship.

As this is, effectively, "free" money I'd be inclined to sell sufficient to benefit from he windfall and to use towards a deposit on a house and keep the rest as an investment. Or, if you think bitcoin is a bubble, sell the lot but invest some in more traditional assets.

Thanks all for your opinions. After a few days' thought I think i'm going to keep either most, or all of the BTC and have ordered a hardware wallet to store them more safely. I'm still thinking about how to tell DP. She is extremely risk averse and has talked me out of several good investments previously: For example she told me not to buy shares in BioNTech in summer 2020, when they cost 80 euro per share as it was 'too much of a risk' and they are now at 240.

We have a shared account for household expenses that we contribute to equally and otherwise have our own accounts and don't talk about money very much.

The question is how to sell this to DP? Any thoughts? i'm thinking of saying i'll sell some so i'm up on my initial 'investment' whatever happens to the rest and then keep at least 2 BTC as long-term investments.

And yes, I do view this bizarre situation as good luck, and definitely not that i'm the next Warren Buffett or anything like that.

I think as per your final sentence, yes, that's the answer. You're up on your initial investment, anything else is, in effect, "free money" and if you lose it all, that's fine.

I do understand the risk averse nature but there's risk averse and then there's odd. If this is, effectively, money you simply didn't have before, there's no reason not to be a little more risky with it than you might be with money that is needed to pay the mortgage or to buy the food.

1 bitcoin is worth £61K so don't sell 2.5 for 100K!!!
Do your research and look at maybe investing 50% in a mix of other things.
Don't forget to allow for capital gains tax though.
Wine is a good investment and there is no CGT payable on it.

Have you written a will? I was just thinking that if something happened to you she wouldn't even though those existed, would she? I think you need to find a way of securing that information in the unlikely event something happened to you.

@endofagain: this was an approximate figure (it was £45k per coin when i looked on Friday), plus BTC value really seems to bounce around a lot, even in the space of a couple of days, it appears. I think the key is not to look too often or it could drive me mad!

If you don't need it then hold it. The market looks promising short term, however long term, it could be life changing.
I am invested heavily in ETH/ BTC/SOL

With some small holdings in some alt coins.

It is very very volatile, and best left invested and not reviewed daily.