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Last week’s auction saw Christian Langalis expecting to receive about $875,000, equivalent to approximately 13.6 Bitcoin, after Scarce City reduced its 15% commission fee. A notebook paper featuring the famous “Buy Bitcoin” phrase, seen during a broadcast with Janet Yellen in 2017, sold for about 16 Bitcoins.
Noteworthy Details from the Auction
The auction, organized by Scarce City auction house, took place at PubKey, a Bitcoin-themed bar in New York City. The highest bid was made by someone known by the alias Squirrekkywrath, during a week-long open auction. The auction was hosted on the Scarce.City platform and was personally conducted by Christian Langalis, also known as Bitcoin Sign Guy.
The iconic “Buy Bitcoin” writing in the yellow notebook symbolizes Bitcoin’s emergence into the global financial scene. This physical artifact stands out as one of the few widely recognized symbols of Bitcoin, primarily due to its digital nature. The auctioned notebook contains Langalis’s original notes and sketches of the sign from that historic day.
At the time of the famous incident, Langalis was known to be a 22-year-old intern at the Cato Institute. The funds from the auction will support Langalis’s new venture, Tirrel Corp, which focuses on creating a Bitcoin Lightning network wallet on Urbit.
Langalis and the Buy Bitcoin Sign
Langalis, in 2019, created and sold 21 copies of the iconic Buy Bitcoin sign, each at an average price of 0.8 Bitcoin. Today, each piece would be worth about $51,300. According to the list, these copies are displayed in the offices of venture firms like Paradigm, Blockchain Capital, Castle Island Ventures, and the crypto think tank Coin Center.
Langalis was removed from the building for violating committee rules after raising the sign during a 2017 House Financial Services hearing. However, the image of the sign quickly spread online.
Since then, the value of Bitcoin has surged, rising from about $2,700 in July 2017 to over $73,000 last month. This increase partly followed significant developments in the US, including the approval of spot Bitcoin exchange-traded funds earlier this year.
