This Canadian gold mine could be yours — $2m in Bitcoin

According to the listing, the small, producing gold mine located in Dawson City has the potential to produce 3,000 to 4,000 ounces of gold per year, and the price tag includes $1 million worth of actual mining equipment, the rights to one mining property and the lease agreement to another mining lot.

The unidentified current owner claims to earn $1m annually in sales and, in an effort to also attract novice bidders, it adds he is willing to stay on to manage the property for up to five years and so ensure the operation runs smoothly.

“The company was founded in 1986, the President and CEO of the company has been in the mining sector for 35 years. A well respected, fully compliant and profitable company, any new buyer could recoup their initial investment in as little as two mining seasons,” the ad says.

For serious buyers, full financial statements, tax returns, profit/loss, balance sheets are available for due diligence.

In March, an Indonesian villa was sold for over $500,000 on the website — the most expensive acquisition through the platform and the single largest bitcoin purchase ever.

If successful the sale of this gold mine would definitively beat that record.

Some background

Before 2013, Bitcoin was on few people’s radars. Designed around 2007 by someone named Satoshi Nakamoto (it’s still unclear who this person actually is), the currency’s value measured in US dollars went from about 5 cents per bitcoin (BTC) to around $13 in late 2012.

But the virtual currency hit the mainstream in 2013 and just a few months later was trading for more than $100 per BTC. It breached the $1,000 mark at its peak in November. Today it’s valued at around $600.

Chart from Goldman Sachs’ ‘All About Bitcoin’ report. 

Bitcoins are created with extremely powerful computers that run algorithms to ‘mine’ for bitcoins. Anyone with the right equipment and know-how can become a Bitcoin ‘miner’ but there’s a predetermined number of coins that can ever be created.

The main appeal behind Bitcoin is that when you trade bitcoins you’re pseudonymous and you pay practically no fees. Most importantly, the system is safe – though this idea has been seriously challenged by the recent collapse of the currency’s largest trading platform, MtGOx. The currency is also free from central bank and government control, which is why some see it as a good store of wealth.