WEALTHY ELITE

The Bitcointalk forum formed a deep well of technical knowledge, economic theory, and cypherpunk culture. It was where you went to learn about Bitcoin, debate blockchain design, and shoot the breeze. It was also a rich source of memes, with many of Bitcoin’s most famous sayings originating here.

For the first 18 months of Bitcoin’s existence, price speculation didn’t feature prominently on the forum. Sure, there were discussions about what Bitcoin was worth and what it might be worth one day, but for the most part users were more interested in spreading the word than pumping the price. They already believed in Bitcoin before it had a dollar value, and now that it did, their conviction hadn’t changed. All that was different was now their belief was measurable.

In summer 2011, however, it was impossible to avoid price talk because Bitcoin had begun going crazy. Not on the protocol level – the chain was still faithfully producing blocks every 10 minutes, give or take – but on the markets, where BTC was entering what we now call “price discovery.”

But to use another contemporary phrase, however, it certainly wasn’t Up Only. While Bitcoin pumped massively off the June 1st Gawker article about Silk Road, the infamous Mt. Gox hack and flash crash was to send the price plunging from $17 to $0.01 on June 19th. It was rollercoaster season, and the Bitcoin community was doing its best to enjoy the ride. It was during this Summer of Bitcoin that a forum member made a post that would enter Bitcoin folklore.

A Meme Is Born

Sometimes the punchline comes before the joke. So it proved to be on June 5th, 2011, when a Bitcointalk forum member expressed absolute confidence that early adopters would become fabulously wealthy in the future. “After reading this, the scale of black market and digital economies and the effect Bitcoin will have on them I am pretty certain we are going to be very wealthy men,” he ventured, “even with a sum as small as 10 Bitcoins.” 

He noted the recent “significant rallies from 10 to 20 dollars” as only “the beginning storms,” and boldly predicted prices in the “hundreds to thousands in the coming months.” The poster then posed a now-legendary question to his peers: “What are you going to do with your Bitcoin wealth once your coins hit upwards of $10,000 a pop?”

It was a wild prediction and yet one that time would vindicate. The punchline, though, that made it into Bitcoin lore preceded the post itself, arriving in the thread topic: “I am pretty confident we are the new wealthy elite, gentlemen.” It was a fedora tip to OP’s fellow Bitcoiners – the ones who’d gotten in before it was cool, and whose patience had now paid off.

While the “new elite” phrase was to become immortal, its author’s sage advice – to hold until their $20 bitcoins had pulled a 500x – got lost by the wayside. As did another zingy one-liner from the OP’s post: “The world just isn't going to be the same and we have been blessed as the pioneers.” They weren’t wrong. The “new elite” thread now runs to over 230 pages on Bitcointalk, while as for Bitcoin, it’s made $10,000 per coin look like rookie numbers. In retrospect, this flippant forum post wasn’t a meme – it was the financial tip of the century.