Jiu-Jitsu Fighter Claims He Lost the Bitcoins He Bought in 2015

Cryptocurrency investors tend to come into the market with the hopes of making it big. However, some get unlucky and miss out on some massive gains due to various reasons. One of the unlucky ones appears to have been Craig Jones, a Brazilian fighter based in Australia.

A Playful Investment that Could Have Yielded Results

Earlier this week, the 27-year-old former International Brazilian Jiu-Jitsu Federation World No-Gi Champion wrote on the CoinJar blog that he had purchased Bitcoin back in 2015. At the time, he and a few friends had bought it as a joke, since it was so cheap. Sadly, they missed out on the chance to cash out of it due to negligence.

“Me and a couple of mates bought some bitcoin for s—-s and giggles and then forgot about it almost immediately. Then when things went crazy… we were all frantically trying to work out who had the password but nobody could remember how to get our account back.”

While Jones didn’t give a number on how many Bitcoins he had bought at the time, he still missed out on a golden opportunity. Bitcoin and several other cryptocurrencies were riding off a historic high as of December 2017, with the top digital asset nearly hitting the $20,000 price point. Jones and his camp could have easily cashed out then.

Even with the market crash and the arduous climb back, Bitcoin is still worth over $9,000 today. If they decide to sell, they’d still make a sizable return on their investment. Jones still has his chance, however, as he has notably been getting some of his prize money for fights in Bitcoin. CoinJar announced that it would be sponsoring the fighter’s exchange account with some crypto, and he also once got paid $1,000 in Bitcoin Cash as part of his winnings for a match.

Crypto and Fighters

The Brazilian is the second fighter this year to confirm a link with the crypto space. In April, Ben Arsken, a former fighter under the Ultimate Fighting Championship (UFC) banner, changed his Twitter name to promote the then-upcoming Bitcoin halving.

Arsken is perhaps the most pro-crypto mixed martial arts fighter out there. He is a known Bitcoin bull, and he merely used his platform to draw attention to one of the industry’s watershed moments of the year. He continued to change the countdown every day until the halving came and went.

Apart from his love for Bitcoin, Arsken is also a noted Litecoin bull. In 2019, he announced on Twitter that the Litecoin Foundation had sponsored his match. He also shared pictures on his Instagram page that showed him wearing a Litecoin-branded outfit.

The Litecoin Foundation did quite a lot of work with the UFC. Apart from sponsoring Arsken, the company announced in a blog post that it had become the “Official Cryptocurrency Partner” of UFC 232. The event, which took place in Inglewood, California, on December 29, 2018, showcased a headline bout between Alexander Gustafson and Jon Jones.

However, Arsken has also been critical of XRP in the past. Early this year, with the third-most valuable cryptocurrency facing intensified scrutiny from industry experts and regulators, he took to Twitter to share that he believed the asset was a scam.