(Photo: Thomas Trutschel/Photothek/Getty Images)

Ensuring that your weird cousin—you know, the one who’s always telling you about his custom VPN and the dankest of internet memes—will be extra insufferable this Thanksgiving, it turns out that Bitcoin is actually worth something. A lot of somethings, in fact; the most famous of the internet’s cryptocurrencies, Bitcoin is currently trading for more than $2,000 a pop after a recent surge, the most it’s ever been worth. Per CNBC, that means that, if you’d bought $100 worth of coins on this date seven years ago (when each was worth only a fraction of a cent), they’d now be worth $72.5 million.


The resurgence of Bitcoin has been linked to a number of factors, most notably new laws in Japan that have made it a legal currency in the country. That’s also helping the currency shed its reputation as the go-to money for criminals, who used it on web sites like the now-shuttered Silk Road to buy guns, drugs, and whatever else you can imagine traveling over a worldwide online black market.

Yesterday was a notable moment in Bitcoin’s history: Bitcoin Pizza Day, the anniversary of the first usage of Bitcoins to purchase a real-world good. (Two Papa John’s Pizzas.) At the time, a guy paid $30 worth of freshly mined coins for his treat; at current market prices, they’d now be worth more than $10 million apiece.