Topic: [History] The Casascius Physical Bitcoin (Updated) (Read 501 times)

With the updated uberbills snapshot 

We should pin this thread at the top of the collectibles page

Mike was definitely an innovator and the community was lucky to have had him involved while he was.

When I was really new to bitcoin years ago, goddamn I really wanted one of these Casascius coins. Specifically, The original series 1 one. The shiny foil just looked so cool to me(just as I loved shiny foils on Pokemon cards when I was young) but I definitely couldn't afford one. This was at the time when I was still using "the other bitcoin forum" when I didn't know bitcointalk existed. How time flies so fast.

Amazing thread, make sure to leave it here so the beginners learn about the collectibles history -- it's a very cool area of bitcoin to explore.

+Merited ya. Thanks again

Great thread! Thanks MJ for posting it on Slack . This definitely deserves to be in the Collectibles section.

Yes...please add same thread in the collectables section

Maybe some of us don't know some important things that happen in the long run of Bitcoin, People are full of questions and I wonder if there is a physical Bitcoin and through researching, I found a man named Casascius.

-Mike Caldwell also known as Casascius, Mike Caldwell is a software Engineer at his home in Sandy, Utah. An early bitcoin adopter and Bitcoin enthusiast that has many contributions in Bitcoin, Caldwell wanted to help popularize the cryptocurrency, but he, too, doesn't like the idea of Bitcoin's intangibility. The physical Bitcoin creator.

-It all starts with an idea to make physical Bitcoins Making a real tangible bitcoin that actually conveys BTC because why not? I think it's a practical idea to promote bitcoin and cryptocurrency more and during those days only a few people know what is the Internet and have a computer.
-In this post, we can see Mike Caldwell enthusiasm towards bitcoin and what he does to make it successful.
Why a physical bitcoin?
"I just want bitcoin to succeed"
-Mike Caldwell

-On 6 September 2011, Mike Caldwell began minting physical Bitcoins, naming the coins Casascius Coins. And put it up to market on September 7, 2011 CASASCIUS PHYSICAL BITCOIN - In Stock Now! (pic)
Coming Very Soon, a real Bitcoin you can hold! (and is worth 1 BTC), Casascius coins are available in the denomination of 1, 10, 25, 100, and 1000 BTC increments.

Physical Bitcoin by Cascasius website:
https://www.casascius.com/

Casascius Bitcointalk profile:
https://bitcointalksearch.org/user/casascius-2676

Mike Caldwell Linkedin:
https://www.linkedin.com/in/casascius/

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How does it work?

• According to the website "Each Coin has its own Bitcoin address and a redeemable “private key” which is covered by a hologram. To read the private key inside the coin the person need to peel the hologram, once peeled and redeemed the coin will no longer have any Bitcoin value. These coins are designed for face-to-face transactions."
• According to Casascius, there will never be more than 11,000 of the original series coins, probably much fewer than this. This coin can be identified by a misspelling of "CASASCIUS" in the small background print (the middle S is missing). As of December 2011 I have made about 3500, and the final count will be further limited by other factors: the percentage of the uniquely numbered holograms that get ruined from the start, many of the sold coins have been opened and redeemed, some of the holograms have gone into the 25 BTC coins, and am not sure if I will keep doing them by hand myself if I can manage series 2 better.
• So in September 2011, he began making physical coins as vessels. Inside of each, he embedded a piece of paper that contained a bitcoin private key, which he protected with a tamper-resistant hologram sticker. As for the word casascius, it was half acronym (derived from the phrase “call a spade a spade”), half Latin-sounding suffix (“cius”).

Counterfeit Casascius Coins
-There have been multiple reports of fake Casascius coins being circulated in the market. The counterfeit and unauthorized coins even appear to mimic the spelling error from the Series 1 coins.

Why does it stop?

• The Financial Crimes Enforcement Network (FinCEN), a branch of the Treasury Department, informed Casascius that minting physical coin and transmitting money requires state license and federal level registration. And thus from Nov 27, 2013, onwards, the sale is suspended for items that contain digital bitcoins, the current items in the sale does not contain bitcoins.
• On November 23, Mike Caldwell suspended sales of items that contain digital bitcoins. The Financial Crimes Enforcement Network (FinCEN), a branch of the Treasury Department, informed him before, that minting physical bitcoins qualifies him as a money transmitter business, which means he needs to register at the federal level and probably get state licenses too.

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Source
https://www.biznews.com/briefs/2014/10/29/whats-bitcoin-look-like-story-behind-popular-photograph
https://en.bitcoinwiki.org/wiki/Casascius_physical_bitcoins
https://bitcoinsaints.blogspot.com/2018/03/mike-caldwell.html
https://www.altcoinbuzz.io/bitcoin-and-crypto-guide/what-is-the-casascius-physical-bitcoin-exploring-an-important-part-of-bitcoins-history/
https://bitcointalksearch.org/topic/m.612307
https://bitcointalksearch.org/topic/m.617766
https://bitcointalksearch.org/topic/m.567203
https://bitcointalksearch.org/topic/m.633876
https://bitcointalksearch.org/topic/m.560486
https://bitcointalksearch.org/topic/m.637515
https://bitcointalksearch.org/topic/m.691038
https://bitcointalksearch.org/topic/m.652819
https://casascius.uberbills.com/