Casascius Coins through the Bitcoin Epochs
Introduction
Casascius coins were physical coins first introduced by Bitcoin user Mike Caldwell in the early days of Bitcoin between 2011 and 2014 as novelty and/or educational items.
The project was subsequently shut down by Mike Caldwell after being contacted by FinCEN regarding regulatory compliance. With the closure of the project, rise in the value of BTC, and historical significance, Casascius coins have become highly sought after collector’s items and the premiere collectible in the Bitcoin space.
If you would like to learn more on Casascius coins, please visit here or here.
Through the course of the project’s 3 year history, a total of 27,938 coins and bars were produced with a combined value of 91,262.8 BTC.
The following article includes historical and statistical data on Casascius Coins centered around the Bitcoin reward epochs. Data was collected and put together by Casascius Tracker. Please note that the following article excludes all DIY (or self-funded) bars.
The tables included in this article can be found here.
Bitcoin Epoch 1
Casascius coins were first announced on August 19, 2011 by Mike Caldwell on Bitcointalk with sales taking place as early as September 6, 2011.
Mike Caldwell funded the first Casascius coin on September 7, 2011: 1139gXxMw4XMzdzAnL7hzAw4f58t9tYbCF
11,893 (42.57%) coins and bars with a combined value of 62,691 (68.69%) BTC were produced during the first Bitcoin epoch.
735 coins and bars were peeled and redeemed for a total UTXO value of 17,014 BTC.
13 different types of coins and bars were introduced — 7 of which belong to the series 1 family and 6 were from series 2.
Series 1 included the following coins and bars:
- The original 1 BTC coin featuring the infamous “CASACIUS” hologram error.
- 5 BTC coin
- 25 BTC coin
- 1000 BTC coin
- 100 BTC bar
- 500 BTC bar
- 1000 BTC bar
Series 2 coins and bars include:
- 1 BTC
- 5 BTC
- 10 BTC
- 25 BTC
- 100 BTC bar
- 500 BTC bar
The most common coin produced in this era was the original 1 BTC coin which had a production run of 5,628 valued at 5,628 BTC. The second most common coin was the Series 2 1 BTC coin with 4,653 coins produced (1,644 in 2011 and 3,009 in 2012.
The highest valued series were the 1000 BTC bars of which 16 were created valued at 16,000 BTC — 10 of which were redeemed also marking the series as the highest redeemed in BTC amount.
The first Bitcoin epoch ended with a total amount of 11,158 coins and bars with a total UTXO value of 45,677 BTC.
Bitcoin Epoch 2
The second Bitcoin epoch marked the end of Casascius coins when FinCEN contacted Mike Caldwell requiring him to register for a money transmitter license on November 15, 2013. The final coins funded by Mike Caldwell date to January 2014.
Casascius coins saw a small revival in 2015 when another Bitcoiner by the name of HardBTC issued 143 new sealed, original Casascius coins by funding them himself in August 2015 and January 2016. These have since come to be colloquially referred to as ‘HardBTC Coins’.
16,045 (57.43%) coins and bars with a combined value of 28,571.8 (30.31%) BTC were produced during the second Bitcoin epoch.
3,281 coins and bars were peeled and redeemed for a total UTXO value of 20,051 BTC making the greatest period in which the most amount of coins and BTC destroyed.
While many of the earlier types of coins and bars saw new production — with rising BTC prices, the higher denomination (≥100 BTC) coins and bars saw little to no production with only 25 100 BTC bars produced and 1 final 1000 BTC gold coin bringing the total quantity up to 6 ever produced.
5 new families of coins and bars were introduced — 1 of which belonged to the series 2 family and 4 to the newly formed series 3 coins.
Series 2 introduced the following new coins:
- 0.5 BTC (Brass)
Series 3 coins included:
- 0.1 BTC (Silver)
- 0.5 BTC (Silver)
- 1.0 BTC (Silver /w Silver “B”)
- 1.0 BTC (Silver /w Gold “B”)
The most common coin produced during the second era was the Series 2 1 BTC coin which saw a production run of 7,735 ( 1,082 in 2012 and 6,653 in 2013) valued at 7,735 BTC. This coupled with the 4,653 coins produced in the first Bitcoin epoch makes it the most mass produced Casascius coin in existence with a total amount of 12,388.
2 of the 6 ever produced 1000 BTC gold coins were destroyed during this era, leaving only 4 in existence.
The highest valued series created was the Series 2 25 BTC coins with a total amount of 317 created valued at 7,925 BTC.
The second Bitcoin epoch ended with a total amount of 23,922 coins and bars with a total UTXO value of 45,677 BTC.
Bitcoin Epoch 3
With Casascius Coins permanently shut down, the third Bitcoin epoch saw no newly created Casascius Coins — they have since become highly sought after rare collector’s items within the Bitcoin community.
2,954 coins and bars were peeled and redeemed for a total UTXO value of 8308.3 BTC.
Leading into the 4th Bitcoin epoch, the most redeemed coin stands to be the Series 2 1 BTC coins with a total of 3,361 redeemed. The second most redeemed coin is the Series 1 1 BTC coin with a total of 1582 redeemed.
The Series 1 500 BTC bar stands to be the only coin or bar to date to have a 100% redeemed rate with 1 out of 1 redeemed.
There are a total of 20,968 coins remaining with a combined value of 45,889.5 BTC.
The most recent peeled coin was a Series 3 0.1 BTC silver coin: 1AgxBcdGAY18Ky8kSBFsBMJB52aUF3Spca
In the 4th Bitcoin epoch, we will likely see the number of spent Casascius UTXOs surpass unspent UTXOs further increasing the scarcity of these coins and UTXOs — 258 BTC remaining for this event.
Credits
- Blockstream for their phenomenal explorer and API which Casascius Tracker queries from.
- Elias Ahonen at Cryptonumist for his book on physical bitcoins and vast amount of knowledge in the area.
- Casascius Bitcoin Analyzer by Uberbills for creating the first Casascius analyzer.
- The Entire Bitcointalk Collectibles Community
- Mike Caldwell for gifting us Casascius Coins
Data was provided by Casascius Tracker.
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