Hasbro, Business Insider

Today, something pretty strange happened.

Someone gave away over $13,000 worth of Bitcoins to complete strangers on Reddit.

Some context: For the last few months, Reddit users have been able to "tip" each other with Bitcoins. Basically, the user sets up a "Bitcointip" account. They are then able to tip other users using simple commands within Reddit.

For example, typing "+bitcointip @Username $1usd" will tip that username the Bitcoin equivalent of $1. The recipient of the tip can then export their tip to a Bitcoin wallet (in this case, BlockWallet.info).

(For more information, try reading Bitcointip's help page here).

As the Bitcointip account writes a message whenever a tip is verified, you can see how people are using it. It appears most people use this feature for comical effect — of the most recent tips, most are below $5:

Reddit

However, earlier today a user who called themselves "Bitcoinbillionaire" began giving out much larger tips:

Reddit

That first tip was apparently worth $4,680.

Over the day, Bitcoinbillionaire gave out 11 tips, some of which were thousands of dollars. By Business Insider's calculation, he or she gave away $13627.69896 worth of Bitcoins.

Most of the time, the tip seemed almost arbitrary. Redditors observing the transactions were left stunned:

Reddit

We messaged some recipients of the tips, who confirmed that they had received the tips (you can also see the tips on BlockChain). The Reddit users who talked to us told us they had had no contact with the Bitcoinbillionaire before receiving the tips.

Who is the Bitcoinbillionaire? We messaged the account to ask for more details, and have not received an answer at the time of writing (we're not sure we expect one either, the account is clearly a throwaway and they undoubtedly got a lot of messages).

There are snippets of information: he or she claims that they were an "early adopter", and had forgotten they even had any Bitcoins. "I am bitcoin," he or she wrote in a moment of megalomania.

Nothing this good can last forever, however. After one user begged for Bitcoin, Bitcoinbillionaire said they had "ruined it":

"You've made me change my mind about this whole thing," the Bitcoinbillionaire wrote. "I'm done."

As of 4 hours ago, the Bitcoinbillionaire has apparently stopped giving out tips. They ended this experiment with a quote from Ron Paul:

Reddit





More From Business Insider

