This 20-year-old Bitcoin millionaire beamed cryptocurrency from space to a school in Ghana
- Erik Finman bought $1,000 worth of bitcoin at the age of 12 in 2011, when each bitcoin was $10 to $12 — today he holds 446 bitcoin, worth $3.2 million according to Friday's price.
- Finman completed a "crypto space drop" to a school in the Greater Accra Region of Ghana on November 4, meaning he beamed cryptocurrency down from a constellation of satellites in outer space to an antenna at the school.
- Finman sees the crypto space drop having applications for delivering cryptocurrency to locations without strong infrastructure.
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Erik Finman, a 20-year-old high school dropout and bitcoin millionaire, beamed cryptocurrency down from outer space to a school in the Greater Accra Region of Ghana on November 4.
Finman bought $1,000 worth of bitcoin at the age of 12 in 2011, when each bitcoin was worth $10 to $12. Today he holds 446 bitcoin, which at Friday's price were worth $7,243 each, for a total value of $3.2 million.
Finman is calling his latest endeavor a "crypto space drop," by which cryptocurrency can be sent through a constellation of satellites to an antenna on Earth. Finman told Business Insider that the crypto space drop has applications for communities with little to no infrastructure.
"We wanted to show that even in the most remote places that don't have the most functional of infrastructure, money infrastructure, financial infrastructure," a crypto space drop could have a real use case, Finman told Business Insider.
Finman sent $1,000 worth of MTL in the crypto space drop to St. Mary's School in Korle Gonno in the Greater Accra Region of Ghana, which used the funds to repair the school's roof and construct benches and tables.
MTL is the cryptocurrency used by cryptocurrency platform Metal Pay, which launched in August with Finman as an investor. Finman called Metal Pay the "the Facebook Libra killer," saying "If it need it, I'm willing to put all my bitcoin money into this" and "I'm willing to bet it all" in his Metal Pay announcement video.
One of the satellites used in the constellation was a satellite Finman helped launch one year ago.
In December 2018, Finman led Project Da Vinci, for which a group of teenagers launched a satellite that included a crypto wallet. Project Da Vinci was part of NASA's Educational Launch of Nanosatellites (ELaNa) program, which attracts and retains STEM students and allows students to launch small satellites.
Check out Finman's crypto space drop: