Casascius Physical Bitcoin

Casascius Physical Bitcoin was a line of physical coins created by Mike Caldwell of Sandy, Utah, starting in 2011. Each coin was a brass, silver, or gold-plated round with a Bitcoin private key sealed beneath a tamper-evident hologram on the reverse. The embedded key funded the coin’s face value at the time of minting, with denominations ranging from 0.5 BTC to 1,000 BTC. As long as the hologram remained intact, the Bitcoin was provably unspent and the coin functioned as a self-contained bearer instrument.

In late 2013, the U.S. Financial Crimes Enforcement Network (FinCEN) determined that the mint constituted unlicensed money transmission under federal law. Rather than register as a money services business, Caldwell ceased production. The project was never hacked or technically compromised; the shutdown was purely regulatory. No new coins have been produced since 2013 and the mint is permanently closed.

Self-custody, Bitcoin only. The private key is embedded in the coin with no third-party involvement. Sweeping the key gives full on-chain control of the BTC. Only Bitcoin (BTC) was ever supported; no other chains or tokens exist in this format.

Today Casascius coins are sought-after collectors’ items. Unpeeled coins with intact holograms trade at a significant premium over their face-value BTC, reflecting their status as verifiable artifacts of early Bitcoin history. Peeled (redeemed) coins retain numismatic interest but no embedded value. For collectors and historians, owning an unpeeled Casascius coin is one of the few ways to hold a tangible piece of the Bitcoin origin era.