Mircea Popescu, the billionaire bitcoin owner, is said to have died, leaving behind a stash of virtual currency and a tumultuous digital legacy. According to Teletica.com, a Spanish-language publication, a foreigner drowned at Playa Hermosa de Garabito, Puntarenas, Costa Rica, last week, the bitcoin BTCUSD, +5.48 percent pioneer, who was believed to own over $1 billion in the world’s No. 1 crypto, making him, at the time, one of the asset’s largest single-holders, died off the coast of Costa Rica.
Popescu was regarded as a digital asset pioneer and one of the first adopters. Popescu was recognized for founding MPEx, a Bitcoin securities exchange, about the same time when Coinbase Global COIN, +8.65 percent began, according to Pete Rizzo’s piece in Bitcoin Magazine. Popescu’s bitcoin holdings would have been worth roughly $2 billion at the end of April this year. Read: Fed’s Quarles warns that the “digital dollar” poses significant threats to the financial system At the time of writing, bitcoin was trading at around $34,295, up 3.2 percent, and Ether ETHUSD, +17.12 percent on Ethereum’s blockchain was trading at $2,079, up over 13 percent, despite reports that the world’s largest crypto trading platform Binance was facing a regulatory crackdown in the United Kingdom, and a separate report claiming that the platform had been forced to pull out of the country. In crypto circles, word of Popescu’s death began circulating, with some speculating on what would happen to his holdings. The recent news also comes as the crypto community continues to grapple with China’s prohibition on bitcoin mining and crypto trading, despite the fact that China is the world’s second-largest economy and the world’s largest crypto miner.
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