+5 Happy and sad stories with Bitcoin on Christmas

It’s almost that time of the year again! And we’ve had some months full of emotions. The crypto industry has received harsh blows in 2022, but not everything is grim and sad. Indeed, this is usually a good season for cryptocurrencies. We can go over some interesting Christmas stories with Bitcoin to prove it.

From nice gifts to evil issues, let’s take this Christmas tour to learn a thing or two about crypto at this time of the year.

Bitcoin as a Christmas gift

In case you didn’t know, 2017 was a great year for Bitcoin (BTC). The price started at $998 and ended at $14,112 after an All-Time High (ATH) touching $20,000 [CMC]. That was a nice increase of over 1,904%, and only in one year. Numerous investors made a lot of money with it, and also prepared themselves and their loved ones for the future.

That was the case with the American software engineer Andy L. He had such a good year with crypto, that he decided to prepare some bitcoins as Christmas presents for family and friends. Indeed, he gave away around $8,000 back then, divided into 0.01 BTC inside 50 Christmas cards.

He made that plan in October when every card would be valued at $50. For Christmas, the amount was $140, but he didn’t change his mind. He commented about it: “I’ve made some money before, but now I’m just making what I call a stupid amount of money with bitcoin (…) So being this generous with people whom we were giving gifts to already isn’t really a concern.”

So, 50 lucky people got 0.01 Bitcoin as a gift that Christmas. If they were patient enough and waited till the 2021 ATH, they could have gotten $687 for free. And maybe, if they’re still patient enough and the predictions are right, they could get even more of it.

New year resolutions

The ads inside train stations are barely impossible to ignore. So, they can be useful tools to promote cryptocurrencies. That’s what the crypto broker Credit Suisse thought in 2020. At the time of Christmas, they installed two big ads about Bitcoin in the Zurich Main train station (Switzerland).

The first one depicts three Christmas pines in a row, with specific years below each. A small and simple pine was assigned for 2012, a bigger one for 2016, and the last one was even bigger, with more decorations and gifts, for 2020. Nice details are the Ethereum symbol as a star and the Bitcoin logo in the gifts. The meaning is evident: the prices of the top altcoins and Bitcoin are higher and higher every Christmas.

The second ad is a little bit less evident, but also smart. A “survey” is presented to the public, between a broccoli (good alimentation), a running foot (exercise), and a BTC coin —which is selected. The question above, in German, tell us what’s going on there: “Neujahrsvorsätze?” It means New Year Resolutions. Therefore, one of the best resolutions you can take for the new year is to buy Bitcoin. And the best part is that a lot of people in Zurich were reached by this (true) story.

Bitcoin and cryptos for kids

What would your kids (nephews, siblings, or little friends) want for Christmas? Admittedly, Bitcoin isn’t the first thing that would come to mind. However, it’s likely the best thing they could get for the future. Some adult investors know this very well, and that’s why they decided to introduce some children to Bitcoin.

Indeed, the little sister of the Redditor known as “TheKennethMoon” asked herself for personal lessons about Bitcoin. As a Christmas gift in 2021. Her big brother gladly accepted and even bought a Trezor hardware wallet for her. Before filling it with some satoshis, though, he used a paper wallet to teach her how to transfer BTC from her phone. Plus, he also added the book “Bitcoin Standard” to the present.

Another Redditor dubbed “ichormusic” starred a similar story, but probably with bigger gains. They gifted 0.025 BTC to their sister back in 2013. The amount in USD barely touched $18 that year. So, they were pleasantly surprised when they keep it until Christmas 2021 to discover about $1,250 on the exchange account. If that’s not a merry Christmas, we don’t know what is.

Christmas charity with Bitcoin

This is the time of year for peace, love, and gifts. So, if you’re a mysterious Bitcoin whale with a generous heart, what it’s better than giving away millions for Christmas? At least that’s what the crypto millionaire “Pine” did in 2017, through the Pineapple Fund. Especially for Christmas, they gave away $1 million in BTC to the Internet Archive. This is a free online library that preserves old websites, documents, and files.

Beyond that, the Pineapple Fund also donated around $55 million in BTCs to 60 charities. These include organizations like The Water Project, BitGive, GiveDirectly, Open Medicine Foundation, Institute for Justice, Green Steps, and MAPS (Multidisciplinary Association for Psychedelic Studies). We don’t who “Pine” is, or where he lives. But we seriously wish them a bright and merry Christmas.

Devil wears a Christmas hat

Ok, time for the sad story of the list. Not everyone is nice for Christmas, especially when they can steal Bitcoin… with style? Believe it or not, the hackers also enjoy the festivities by delivering Christmas-themed malware. And they use the ransomware type to ask for their year-end bonus.

This is a kind of malware that, once installed on your device, encrypts the personal files (documents, images, audio, video…) or the entire hard drive and ask you for a ransom (often in cryptocurrency) to return them. There are a lot of malicious developers and variants, and the Christmas variants are included. Indeed, we have a type dubbed “Merry Christmas Ransomware”. The warning text isn’t very Christmassy, though.

Other hackers, exhibiting a higher Christmas spirit, have offered a discount on the usual payment of their variant (1.2 BTC in 2016). With a message to have a Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year, they reduced the ransom to 0.5 BTC. That’s… nice of them?

You can get this type of malware by downloading suspicious files from non-official websites or opening attached files in emails. Be very careful about it, if you really want to have a merry Christmas, with all your Bitcoin in your wallet.

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