The Fortune of François Martin, or How to Become a Crypto-Billionaire
See Part 1.
The origin of the fortune of François Martin is the two thousand US dollars he spent to buy Bitcoins in August 2010.
François Family in 2011 and 2012
François and Borcsi continued to work for AdaCore and they were able to pay their mortgage, go on vacations and finance the studies of their children.
In 2011, Clovis was 26. After high school graduation in 2003, he studied at the University of the Fraser Valley in Abbotsford and became an agronomist. He married Rajbinder (Raj), born in Abbotsford, of East Indian descent. He started to work, in Abbotsford, for the Government of British Columbia as an agronomist, specializing in fruits and vegetables.
Joséphine has been interested in video games since she was 13, and was quite good at various games. However, when she was 16, she realized that she would never be successful as a professional gamer, and even if she could, she would not enjoy some parts of this life. She followed her parents and got a degree in software engineering from Simon Fraser University in Burnaby. In September 2008, she started to work developing videogames for Electronic Arts in Burnaby, where she lives.
Charles, who was 23 in 2011, got a certificate in accounting and worked for Mucika, a Hungarian friend of her mother, in tax accounting. In 2010, he passed the exam to be a strata manager, and he intended to also pass the exam to be a realtor.
François has always been an avid reader and the two main recent authors that had a big impact on him and Borcsi are Nassim Nicholas Taleb and Michael Pollan.
Like many people, he bought The Black Swan in 2008. After reading a few pages, he realized that Taleb had written another book Fooled by Randomnes, so he immediately went to buy it and read both books in less than a week. The idea of asymmetrical investment resonates with him; in fact, he realized that his investment in Bitcoins was highly asymmetrical.
After reading The Botany of Desire in 2002, François was more interested in The Omnivore's Dilemma in 2006 and In Defense of Food in 2008. He really liked Pollan's motto: "Eat food. Not too much. Mostly plants."
In fact, in 2010, he began vegan, with few exceptions, such as one slice of birthday cakes. Borcsi did not become vegan. She was happy to cook vegan food, but she still ate meat, cheese, and eggs, although less often.
For several years, Borcsi had been volunteering at the SPCA Abbotsford Community Animal Centre, mostly helping people to adopt rescued cats and dogs. She had persuaded François to let her adopt two cats: Bandit and Prince, and she is taking care of them.
She also has joined the Abbotsford Nordic Walking group, and every Saturday afternoon, when in Abbotsford, she goes with the group for a two hours walk, either on flat ground or in the mountains north of the Fraser river. Sometimes François goes with them.
In 2012, François was increasingly nervous about keeping his Bitcoins on an exchange such as Mt. Gox. He agreed with "not your keys, not your cryptos". As soon as he could he moved his Bitcoins into two wallets and make sure that he printed his keys and recovery word lists.
2013: First sales of BTC
On April 9th, 2013, François sold 400 Bitcoins at US$200. He got around 87,000 Canadian dollars from this sale, which help him to pay part of their mortgage and have a nice vacation during the summer.
And on December 3rd, he sold 8,000 Bitcoins at US$1,050. It took him some time to get the money to his banking account. As he got it in January and February 2014, he did not have to pay taxes (capital gain at 15%) until the year 2015. But he made sure he did pay the capital gains on the $87,000 he got in April.
From the sale 0f the 8,000 BTC, he got around 9.4 million Canadian Dollars. Minus 15% that he needed for taxes, he still had around 8 million Canadian dollars.
First, they finished paying the mortgage of their house.
Then, they bought for $1.5M a vacation house near a lake, 80 km east of Abbotsford.
And with the rest of the money, he created a small company, Abbot Martin, Ltd. The company bought 5 houses for rent.
François persuaded Charles to move to Abbotsford, to open his own tax accounting firm, and to manage the houses bought by Abbot Martin.
Also, in 2014, François bought a Trezor 1 from Satoshi Labs.
In all of his wallets, in 2014, François still had 20,000 Bitcoins.
Continue to Part 3
Remember that this is a work of fiction. François Martin does not exist (at least not the one in this story). But everything that is described could have happened IRL.