A physical bitcoin from the legendary 2011-2013 Casascius coin had its hologram seal removed on Wednesday and the 25 BTC stored inside, worth $1.70 million at current prices, was transferred to a new wallet.
Casascius coins were physical tokens created by software engineer Mike Caldwell in denominations of 0.5, 1, 5, 10, 25, 100 and even 1,000 BTC. Each coin had its receiving bitcoin address printed on the outside, with the matching private key hidden under a tamper-proof hologram on the back.
🪙 CASASCIUS COIN REDEEMED — S1-COIN-25 (25 BTC face) swept for 25,0000 BTC ($1.78M)
A physical Casascius bitcoin from 2011-2013 mint has been peeled and the private key swept on chain.
Address: 1tLPQwd6wjvZpreivwHsEuU2ceSv6zaon
Also in our DB: Noah Doe #38977 ·…— Galaxy Research (@glxyresearch) June 3, 2026
Holders could use bitcoin at any time by peeling off the hologram and importing the private key into a wallet, a one-way move that destroyed the coin’s collectible status.
Caldwell halted production in late 2013 after the US Financial Crimes Enforcement Network told him he was operating as an unlicensed money transmitter.
Casascius coins with intact hologram continue to occupy an unusual category in the collectors’ markets. Each piece has genuine bitcoin at face value and provides a numismatic premium for the physical artifact when sold intact on collectors’ markets. Thousands of Casascius coins remain unredeemed in all denominations, trackers show.
Caldwell minted fewer than 20 of the 1,000-BTC denomination pieces, most of which are still intact and each will now contain the equivalent of about $66 million in bitcoin. While the project inspired a wave of physical bitcoin successor coins including Lealana, Denarium and BTCC, Casascius remains the most collected by a wide margin.
Peeling a Casascius is a one-way trade with real financial stakes. Intact Series 1 coins with large denominations typically command a premium over their face value in bitcoin, meaning Wednesday’s redemption converted what could have been a more expensive collectible back into pure bitcoin.
The redemption, recorded at Bitcoin block 952,159, arrives during a week of unusual activity at the dormant end of Bitcoin’s UTXO set, with a 2011-era wallet moving 35 BTC after 15 years of dormancy.
