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Man Who Bought Bitcoin In 2015 Buys Car And Can Overpay Mortgage

Man Who Bought Bitcoin In 2015 Buys Car And Can Overpay Mortgage

He bought a Tesco meal deal which would now be worth £210

Amelia Ward

Amelia Ward

A man who bought £2000 worth of bitcoin in 2015 has managed to pay off his mortgage and bought a Skoda Octavia.

Chris Sedgwick, from Yorkshire, first bought the cryptocurrency in 2015. He and his wife were trying for child and the cost of a bitcoin was about £150.

Since then, the £2000 he invested initially became worth £75,000 - a return of 3,650 percent.

But the cybersecurity professional doesn't plan on living lavishly, and instead only withdrew £25,000 of his fortune.

When he first transferred his bitcoin onto a debit card, he tried it out at Tesco, buying a meal deal for £3.54 - 0.0073 bitcoin.

He said: "I have since worked out that if I had kept this bitcoin, I would be £210 richer. I mean, the sandwich was nice but not £200 nice."

In 2017, he decided to overpay his mortgage by £3,000, selling £11,000 worth of cryptocurrency tax-free. He used it to buy a Skoda Octavia.

He joked: "Not even the VRS version, just standard, like proper boring. Bitcoin Lamborghinis are all about speed and smiles but I was all about boot space and miles."

Chris Sedgwick

Speaking to This is Money, he said: "Not all people who got into bitcoin early now drive Lamborghinis and live on private islands.

"Some people, like me, invested a modest amount and have done sensible things like buying boring cars and overpaying the mortgage."

Chris added: "If I had loaded it all onto the Visa card then it would have all gone on meal deals."

But even if the price of the bitcoin he has left drops to zero - although it's currently valued at £50,000 - he still will have made a profit of 1,150 percent.

With the rest of the money, Chris is still planning on living sensibly.

He said: "I am now in the position that I am in my mid-30s, and the current price of bitcoin now affords me the ability to pay off my mortgage if I so wanted.

"Although, given interest rates are so low this is something I'd probably not follow through with.

"For starters, to make the most of my bitcoin I would need to take out under the capital gains tax limit of £12,300 a year, so it would take me a few years to do this tactic.

Chris Sedgwick

"Secondly, the benefit of me doing so is against a fixed amount, namely that of my mortgage interest rate. I'd much rather ride out this bitcoin rollercoaster to see if it does indeed go "to the moon".

"In my eyes, the benefits of keeping my bitcoin as bitcoin is better than converting it to pounds and paying off a paltry fixed one percent on my mortgage."

The only way he said that he could be convinced to sell was an explosion in interest rates and his mortgage costs

The other? 'A Skoda Octavia VRS complete with a boot full of Tesco meal deals.'

But for every story like Chris Sedgwick's, there are those who have missed out on the bitcoin boom.

Featured Image Credit: PA

Topics: Bitcoin, UK News