In 2009 I did a job for a client and he offered me 400 btc or $400. I took the $400 and kinda regret it. Likely as not I wouldn’t have held till now but still
Bitcoin was worthless in 2009, tbf. It wasn’t even until may 2010 that the first "purchase of anything was made with them, and that was 2 large Poppa John’s pizzas. All for a meager 10,000 btc.
I paid someone 0.1 bitcoin for a ~$30 item in 2013. I checked the receiving wallet in 2014 and it hadn’t been accessed. I reached out to the guy and told him it was worth $60 and asked him if he had access still. Explained to him how he could access it, gave him some links. I reched out to him again in 2021 and told him it was worth $4k and told him he should sell it. He said he didn’t remember how he set up a wallet and he couldn’t access it. In the end I think he likely downloaded a wallet to his computer and then got rid of that computer. Just checked today and that .1 btc is still there, worth 9600 now.
I have almost 2 coins in a corrupted wallet file. I tried to recover it for ages. I still have it, but now it just sits there mildly tormenting me for life.
There’s always hope
https://www.wired.com/story/roboform-password-3-million-dollar-crypto-wallet/
Meanwhile they are probably on their yacht thinking about how lucky they are you chose the $400