Rüdiger suggested to me that I buy some Bitcoin. I toyed with the idea, but never got around to it for reasons I can’t remember. Huge regret!

Bitcoin today costs over $8,200 per coin. When it opened to the public seven years ago, the cost was six cents. If you or I had purchased $100 of bitcoin back then, the value would now be $13 million.

It is darkly amusing / horrifically sad to contemplate what thousands of transhumanists worldwide would have done with 13 million, if all of us had invested in Bitcoin.

I sent a query to transhumanist friends, to hear their individual Bitcoin tales. Here’s the replies:

Anatoly Karlin: I would single-handedly triple the SENS Foundation’s annual budget.

Bala Guruswamy: I would build a senior citizen community, if I had $13 Million

Lincoln Cannon: I would use it to launch a nootropics business. And I did! :) 

Gareth John: Oh God... my worst nightmare, truly. I remember the day Bitcoin opened and I considered throwing a couple of hundred pounds at it, just for the hell of it. I didn’t… I would invest the dough in setting up a social media platform for transhumanists of all varieties that does not sell data to advertisers, perhaps through paid membership. I might, however, syphon off a few quid first to purchase a Tesla Roadster. For research purposes.

Aaron Silver-Pell: ahhhhh. don't think like that.  just think about how much you could have lost if you invested in Enron. But, if I WAS a bitcoin millionaire, i probably would just buy my own lab and do life extension experiments. 

Giulio Prisco: I was a very early miner and I had lots of bitcoins at that time, much more than $100. I did things like sending 100 bitcoin to friends to get them started. Some of the friends I sent bitcoin to made good careers in the cryptospace. I used bitcoins to pay for VPNs and all sorts of stuff online, because I wanted to promote crypto. Then I sold all my remaining bitcoins a couple of years later, when the price was $10 or so, because I need some quick cash. If I had kept my bitcoins I would have much more than $13,000,000. now, I guess $100 million or more. What would I do with the money? I guess something wild, crazy, unPC, irresponsible, and world-changing.

Hank Pellissier: I would spend the first 3 million on responsible items: 1) gain PhDs for my children, 2) pay off the mortgage, 3) convince my wife to retire, 4) set up a huge Passion Fruit Farm in Uganda to fund education at the local secular humanist school. The other 10 million would be “self-serving”… I’d get a Head Transplant in China, trading in my 65-year-old body for a teenage physique.  

(Readers: send your story to transhumanparty@gmail.com - it will be added to this article)