> The computer that I used to mine bitcoin is probably in the pile of junk inside the garage

It's funny because it's true: https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-wales-55658942

Maybe "true" isn't the best word to use. There are too many stories like this for them all to be true. Great story though.

At that time you even had bitcoin faucets that gave you 0.5-1-5 btc to play around. Or you could just run a miner on your gpu and get 50btc if you ran it for a few days or so - a ton of people probably have those on some partition on an old laptop or sth.

Yes, but we know where those coins are now: in circulation. And we have a good grasp how many that is and how many could possibly on on those shelved laptops. It is literally how every coin in circulation was minted as there is no central party, only your peer devices.

LMAO. I have about 150 Bitcoins sitting on an old hard drive at the bottom of the local dump. I guess someone would try to dig them up if it ever hits a million, but doubtful they could recover them much less unlock them.