TIL In 2013, WIRED destroyed 13 Bitcoins they had acquired by mining because they didn’t want it to affect their journalism

Stefan Antonowicz, the head of engineering in WIRED was the one who set up the miner as an experiment, “to see what all the fuss was about.”

After they had acquired 13 Bitcoins, they started to question what they should do with the Bitcoin.

It took around 13 hours to mine a single Bitcoin back in 2013 using an ordinary PC.

Some supported the view that they should donate it to a charity, and others that it should be destroyed permanently, one of them saying:

“We talked about donating it to a journalism institution, or setting it aside as a scholarship. But we decided that if we gained any benefit from it at all, it would color our future coverage of Bitcoin”

They also said that:

“The world’s most popular digital currency really is nothing more than an abstraction,”

I think to destroy so much money that could help others even for journalistic integrity is very stupid, and that they could've used it in a better way, but it's an interesting story.

An article about the story:

https://cointelegraph.com/news/in-2013-wired-destroyed-the-key-to-13-bitcoin-now-worth-760k-to-make-a-point

50 thoughts on “TIL In 2013, WIRED destroyed 13 Bitcoins they had acquired by mining because they didn’t want it to affect their journalism”

  1. I bet they regret it, they’re just doing what journalists do, making a story out of it

  3. It’s funny to think about the insane amount of money those 13 BTC are worth now or in the last bull market, but think of how much more they would be worth in the future.

  5. They didn’t want to affect their journalism, so they sticked to their prejudiced hate instead of doing some actual research. Wired in a nutshell.

  7. If only I spent those 13 hours mining instead of playing Last of Us video game.

  9. Some of the users here in this sub have sold/used thousands of BTC back in the days. Nobody could’ve guessed that BTC would be what it is today.

    Going long term with BTC always wins.

  10. >The world’s most popular digital currency really is nothing more than an abstraction,”

    Quite an ironic statement by them.

    How the turntables…

  11. >It took around 13 hours to mine a single Bitcoin back in 2013 using an ordinary PC.

    (ಠ_ಠ)

  12. Damn, always wish i had mined or bought back then 🥲 probably wouldnt still have it. But still.

  13. Even though I disagree with their conclusion, I respect their decision to maintain journalism integrity. The founder knew he might be missing out on something and took accountability for it.

  16. Quick, someone send them 13 Moons to destroy so that Moons will reach $30k in the future

  17. “The world’s most popular digital currency really is nothing more than an abstraction,”

    Said a journalist who is selling stories for money.

  18. In hindsight it was a bad idea. But I’m glad they choose integrity, it’s very rare nowadays.

  19. How could you think it was stupid, it wasn’t worth then what it is now. People did all kinds of stupid stuff when bitcoin was worth little….

  20. They probably regret that decision. They could have easily donated it and it wouldn’t have affected their mindset about the project but they tried to make a bold point.

  21. Proof-of-Work pros & cons with related info are in the collapsed comments below.

  22. now days some people thought the successor after BTC will be moons, LMAO

  25. If they knew how much it is/will be worth, would they have still destroyed it? I bet not

  26. Funny 😂 journalists saying that something is nothing more than an abstraction. 🤪

  28. 13 hours was needed to mine a Bitcoin and I spent my time in 2013 playing WoW, major F.

  31. This exact title and article was posted yesterday and I guess it was deleted.

  33. strange decision, money is bigger than integrity, the bank balance you have the more respect you have

  34. >I think to destroy so much money that could help others even for journalistic integrity is very stupid, and that they could’ve used it in a better way

    But they only threw away a little over $1000 at the time, it’s not like it’s life changing money at that point. I’ve worked for companies that have wasted far more than that in far stupider ways

  38. So strange how much BTC is worth now compared to how many people had BTC originally and then they just dumped it. Tough to look back on I bet.

  39. Okay, so about $1200 at the time. Same can be said about anyone who didn’t buy 13 bitcoins for $1200 10 years ago.

    These posts needs to be filtered out imo

  42. A quick Google tells me bitcoin was about $13 in 2013. That means you made basically $25/day from mining. God. I wish I could have got in on that.

  45. Somewhere they must be regretting because today the price of bitcoin is much higher than in 2013.

  47. Bitcoin can’t be destroyed. I wonder who gave them that idea. This goes to show how some journalists don’t do their due diligence, by reading the Bitcoin white paper, they would have known.

  48. Proof-Of-Stupid. And then people complain of injustice/ inequality. You have the opportunity of changing dozens of people’s lives and you decide to burn the money, on something you obtained legally? r/firstworldproblems Stupid!

  49. >It took around 13 hours to mine a single Bitcoin back in 2013 using an ordinary PC.

    Meanwhile, I was using my PC to download MP3 songs with viruses, when I could have made better use of my computer power.

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