Early Bitcoin millionaire missed out on insane $99,000,000 fortune after one simple mistake

Most people would see their lives dramatically changed these days if they got their hand on just a single Bitcoin, yet one of the leading cryptocurrency's earliest millionaires lost himself a fortune of around $99 million thanks to one major costly mistake.

While Bitcoin might have dropped significantly from the highs of last year, it's current value of around $68,000 per coin is still incomprehensibly more than what it was over a decade ago.

It took the cryptocurrency nearly a year after it first launched to be valued at more than a single dollar, and most people didn't even know it existed – let alone were willing to put their real hard-earned money into it – until at least the mid 2010s.

Those that were bold enough to invest in the early stages have certainly reaped the benefits, as many have managed to become millionaires (and in some cases, billionaires) off the back of the unregulated currency.

Jered Kenna (left) was one of Bitcoin's earliest millionaires, profiting significantly from early adoption of the cryptocurrency (Astrid Stawiarz/Getty Images for the 2014 Tribeca Film Festival)

As shared by Supercar Blondie, one of these lucky investors was Jered Kenna, who became one of the earliest Bitcoin millionaires after purchasing around $1,000 worth of the cryptocurrency, which worked out to roughly 5,000 Bitcoins at $0.20 each.

What has emerged as a common theme for most crypto-related horror stories though is people losing the coins that were stuck on an old device, as it's usually either thrown away or locked up after the password is forgotten.

In Kenna's case though it's arguably even more tragic, as not long after he bought his significant share in Bitcoin he'd managed to accidentally delete around 800 of them from his computer.

At the time he didn't see it as anything more than a frustrating inconvenience, with the value of the lost coins being around $160 which is frustrating but something you can get over with time.

Those deleted Bitcoins would be worth roughly $54.4 million now, and could have been sold for just under $100 million at its peak (Dan Kitwood/Getty Images)

Looking back in retrospect though he must be kicking himself, as while he still managed to earn himself a fortune from the cryptocurrency, those 800 coins now would be worth roughly $54.4 million, and he could have sold them for as much as $99.8 million at the crypto coin's peak last July.

Of course, that would have required him to hold onto them for over 15 years which would have been incredibly difficult considering the rise that the cryptocurrency received across that time, and it's far more likely that Kenna would have sold the stock alongside what made up his initial fortune early on.

There's no telling what that consequently could have lead to though, as having more available funds in the early stages could have allowed him to invest further into the cryptocurrency, making far more in the future.