How one college student’s sign made him a small Bitcoin fortune.
Via i.imgur.com
Mining for Bitcoins is a process still not really familiar to most people, but if you want some encrypted currency of your own, apparently all you have to do is ask and you shall receive.
That's exactly what a college student in Auburn, Ala., did this weekend when he effectively crowdfunded a plea to his mother to send money back to him at school in the form of Bitcoin. When the sign he was holding with his message caught the attention of ESPN's College GameDay cameras, the Reddit community, which has a well-documented obsession with Bitcoin, seized the opportunity to contribute to the student's fund.
Within hours, redditors had figured out the student's Bitcoin wallet address by enhancing the QR code he had put on his sign. From there, the money started pouring in.
Via reddit.com
Though the student, only identified up to this point as his Reddit username BitcoinPitcher2, didn't initially think the QR code would be able to be scanned, fellow redditors have proven him wrong to the tune of nearly 23 Bitcoins as of Monday afternoon. At a value of nearly $1,100 per Bitcoin, the student has raked in more than $25,000 in a little over 24 hours and counting.
He seems just as surprised as anyone else by the influx of donations: "It wasn't supposed to take off like this!!!" he posted on Reddit. It seems in this case, fortune indeed favors the bold.
