An Australian couple who retired and live in Queensland put $48,000 into Bitcoin in 2019. Four years later, they cashed out nearly $500,000

Terry and Justine Sanders put $48,000 into Bitcoin in 2019. Four years later, the retired Queensland couple sold their holdings for nearly $500,000. For two people approaching 80, the decision had delivered a financial return that few of their peers might have expected from cryptocurrency.

The couple live in Sandgate, a bayside suburb of Brisbane. Their experience stands out at a time when more older Australians are taking an interest in digital currencies, despite the risks involved. Bitcoin has created substantial wealth for some early investors, but its sharp price swings have also left others facing heavy losses.

Justine Sanders, who was 79 when she spoke to the ABC, said the investment had changed their lives. They had kept their involvement in cryptocurrency relatively quiet, partly because people their age were unlikely to see it as a sensible place for their money.

A $48,000 Bitcoin bet that paid off

Terry and Justine Sanders, who live in Sandgate on Brisbane’s bayside, bought $48,000 worth of Bitcoin in 2019 and sold four years later. They cashed out with nearly $500,000, which works out to roughly ten times the amount they originally put in.

Ms Sanders, 79, says the money changed their lives, though she and her husband rarely mention it to people their age. The few people they did confide in, she says, “thought we had absolute rocks in our heads.”

Independent Reserve, a crypto exchange, estimates that as many as 6.5 million Australians have invested in digital currencies of some kind. Its survey of 2,000 people found that 8.2 per cent of Australians over 65 have owned crypto, up from 2 per cent in 2019.

That’s a fourfold rise, but from a very small starting point, so the share of older owners is still modest. The direction is clear, even if the reported figures don’t show how much older owners have invested.

Among respondents with self-managed super funds, the number who said they’d like to invest in Bitcoin also doubled over the same period. Independent Reserve sells crypto, so the survey comes from a business with a commercial interest in the topic.

Why regulators warn retirees about risk

Bitcoin’s price has climbed from about $5,000 in 2019 to roughly $170,000, with several booms and busts along the way. That’s about 34 times higher, though the Sanderses sold earlier and didn’t capture all of that rise.

It was meant to be a decentralised store of wealth outside the big banks, yet shops rarely accept it as payment.

For every success story there’s a cautionary tale, and crypto traders have their own term for the bad outcomes: getting wrecked.

The Australian Securities and Investments Commission classes crypto as a “very high-risk” investment.

Commissioner Alan Kirkland says it’s prone to crashes. That, he says, makes it a poor fit for retirees who need a stable investment rather than one that swings sharply. His warning is blunt: “You might get lucky but you might also lose a lot of money very fast.”