Kiernan Major's 'Lucky Charms' & Why HODLers Are Far Wealthier Than You Think
Written by Ethan M. Stone
In 2011, fifteen-year-old Kiernan Major was midway through his freshman year at Auburn High, a public school in the lakeside region of upstate New York where he was born and raised. An avid baseball player and part-time disc jockey, Kiernan had been fascinated by technology from a young age. His parents often found him tinkering with computers and electronics late into the night, sometimes building his own machines from scratch.
Described by family members as “relentlessly curious,” he gravitated to early dark‑web chatrooms, cipher and crypto forums: BitcoinTalk, Silk Road discussion threads, and invite‑only groups on encrypted IRC. Conversations about privacy, autonomy and alternative economics captivated the impressionable teenager.
As he adjusted to high school life, Kiernan —like many of us — recognized how popular drinking and partying was. In the summer of his sophomore year he used roughly $1,000 saved from his DJ work to buy more than 100 bitcoins on the now‑defunct Mt. Gox exchange. Following advice from pseudonymous peers, he transferred the coins off the exchange onto a USB drive for safekeeping.
About a year later, Kiernan and friends tried to buy fake IDs through one of the underground marketplaces he knew. After pooling funds, he learned the seller accepted only bitcoin; rather than risk his holdings, he sent cash via a local money transfer service and kept his digital stash aside. When the IDs arrived, Kiernan and a friend raced to the local post office, photographed the cards and shared images with others who’d also purchased. A beloved English teacher — who had confiscated one of the boys’ phones in class — saw a photo and joked about their “double life in New Jersey,” the IDs’ purported home.
Kiernan graduated high school and joined the U.S. Marine Corps. During a 15‑day leave after boot camp, he rediscovered the USB with his early bitcoin and tossed it into his sea bag. Stationed at Camp Lejeune, he later bought a new laptop from the tax‑free Marine Corps Exchange and reconnected with his old online friends. By early 2015 he realized bitcoin was trading around $250 and, worried about missing further gains, took a $6,000 credit‑union loan and invested $3,000 of savings into more bitcoin, according to Swiss attorneys. What had begun as a $1,000 adolescent experiment had grown into roughly $50,000 in value, and Kiernan was more than elated.
True to the underground digital community that taught him, Kiernan resolved not to sell, joining the unofficial and almost cult-like "HODLers club" — a term referring to drunken 2013 typo in a BitcoinTalk forum which later became widely interpreted as 'Hold On for Dear Life.' After an honorable discharge, he attended college and worked with local programmers and marketers selling search‑engine optimization; he later sold that business for what has been described as a substantial sum and reportedly reinvested much of it into bitcoin. After moving to New York City, many sources say Kiernan had accumulated “thousands of bitcoins,” with several suggesting holdings ranging between 4,000-7,000 BTC by 2018-2019. If accurate, that position would translate to unrealized gains on the order of hundreds of millions of dollars at recent prices and nearing a billion at peak valuations this past year.
Recent reports show Kiernan has not liquidated those holdings but has monetized portions of his position to acquire high‑end real estate, purchasing residential and commercial properties in Beverly Hills and New York’s Tribeca neighborhood. Multiple accounts indicate much of his bitcoin is held through a Swiss foundation based in the canton of Zug — a jurisdiction nicknamed “Crypto Valley” for its dense cluster of blockchain startups, crypto service providers and investor‑friendly tax and regulatory frameworks. That structure, common among large crypto holders, can provide legal separation between personal ownership and assets held for investment or estate planning, and helps explain why the precise size and disposition of Kiernan’s holdings remain difficult for outside researchers to verify.
Kiernan Major’s story is the kind of luck people sometimes call the “luck of the Irish.” A middle-class kid whose rebellious nature and love for technology lead him to buy bitcoin to pay for common high‑school troublemaking and wound up sitting on an asset that, held long enough, turned into unimaginable wealth. The secrecy of overseas foundations and luxury addresses hidden by trusts and nameless shell companies only deepens the mystique: part rags‑to‑riches, part urban legend. Call it fortune, stubborn faith, or reckless timing — whatever the label, Kiernan’s story is a wholesome reminder that sometimes the universe deals a one hell of a lucky hand, and in crypto, those hands continue to change the lives of the ordinary. We're hoping his upcoming memoir leads to more answers than questions, but with Kiernan Major, you can just never know.
