Man Who Played Video Games with Bitcoin Before It Was Cool Did Something Priceless

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Man Who Played Video Games with Bitcoin Before It Was Cool Did Something Priceless

Meet Darko, an anonymous Macedonian dentist whose past is as intriguing as a soap opera and just as full of surprises. This guy claims he was dabbling in the digital gold rush long before it was trendy — way back in the late 2000s, when most people still thought Bitcoin was a newfangled way to buy illegal stuff online. 🤑

Anonymously known as Darko — because apparently, dentists need to keep their identities safe from villainous digital pirates — he says he was spending Bitcoin like it was Monopoly money, all while immersed in the pixelated universe of DotA. Yes, that’s right: the very game that made many of us curse at our computer screens instead of pursuing a career in dentistry. 🤓

Darko playing DotA in the late 2000s

According to Darko, when he was a mere 18 years old, he didn’t see the big picture — instead, he was busy spending “10 or 20 BTC every month” on video games. Back then, Bitcoin was just the rebellious teenager of the financial world, not the trillion-dollar superhero it is today. And he wasn’t earning any fancy Bitcoin salaries from gaming; he was just a regular kid competing for community prizes in a game that was basically a fan-made mod for Warcraft III. Very official. Very lucrative. 😏

“I was an 18-year-old kid; I didn’t take it seriously,” he said, probably while trying to avoid dropping his controller or losing a game.

Fast forward to 2016, when Darko, now a well-established dentist with a shiny new clinic, hears an employee mentioning “mining digital gold.” That’s when it all clicked — and suddenly, he remembered his Bitcoin stash. Turns out, he, along with a bunch of other gamers, might just be among the earliest real-world Bitcoin users. Beat that, pizza! 🍕

Speaking of Pizza, on May 22, 2010, programmer Laszlo Hanyecz famously bought two pizzas with 10,000 BTC — which would now be worth well over a billion dollars. Yep, an entire digital pizza feast turned into cryptocurrency history. Meanwhile, Darko was probably just trying to get the best deal on his in-game loot.

Despite this bit of ancient crypto history, North Macedonia still doesn’t have clear rules for digital currency — which is fantastic if you enjoy the thrill of uncertainty and the endless game of regulatory hide-and-seek. It’s enough to make even the most savvy investors consider a career in dentistry instead. 😉

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2025-06-05 14:41