A long-dormant entity made a move with 200 BTC on April 8, marking its first transaction since Dec. 27, 2012. While that milestone is notable, what elevates the event’s intrigue is the origin of the coins: two separate Casascius physical bitcoin bars, each containing precisely 100 BTC.
Entrepenuer Mike Caldwell minted the Casascius line, crafting not only coins in varying bitcoin denominations but also hefty bars calibrated at 100 BTC, 500 BTC, and 1,000 BTC. Take Series 1 (S1) as an example: Caldwell issued 57 bars of 100 BTC, and just seven remain untouched.
The pair opened this month—its tamper-evident holograms stripped and the bitcoin sent elsewhere—came from Caldwell’s Series 2 (S2) run of 100- BTC bars. Caldwell fashioned about 81 such bars, and casasciustracker.com shows 30 still roaming unpeeled in the wild.
Before this episode, the most recent 100- BTC bar expenditure occurred in October 2024, when an S2 was likewise opened. Earlier still, the 100- BTC bar peel hobby had been dormant; the previous peel dated back to October 2021. Spending Casascius artifacts is already fairly uncommon, and parting with a 100- BTC bar is rarer still.
The prized 1,000- BTC bars tell an even tighter tale: only 16 were minted, and merely two remain sealed or unspent. The last time anyone opened a 1,000- BTC bar traces back to August 2014. Across the entire program, some 27,929 Casascius coins and bars were minted; 18,042 are still active, and roughly 20 coins lost their holograms in April.
Collectively, those 27,929 pieces originally encapsulated about 91,263 BTC. Thus far, holders have redeemed 52,569 BTC, leaving another 38,694 BTC entombed within still-sealed Casascius items. At current prices, the unspent trove carries an estimated price tag of about $3.64 billion. What makes the peeling of the two bars on April 8 particularly intriguing is that bitcoin (BTC) was trading in the relatively modest $76,000 range at the time—only to rebound to the $82,000 level the very next day.
