Coinbase, the cryptocurrency exchange platform that went public yesterday, is, as of right now, worth $60 billion.

What a story this is from its early days, just 9 years ago...

When Coinbase first launched nine years ago, it hired its very first employee after receiving an enthusiastic, but "annoyingly long" cold email.

And the company paid him in bitcoin.

That email came from Olaf Carlson-Wee, who in 2012 had just graduated from Vassar College with a degree in sociology. He'd written his undergraduate thesis on bitcoin "and the larger implications of open source finance."

"I literally cold emailed jobs@coinbase and said, ‘I love bitcoin. Here's my thesis. I'll do any job,'" Carlson-Wee told Y Combinator.

After becoming employee No. 1 with a job in customer support at the then-fledgling company, for his three years there, Carlson-Wee was paid entirely in bitcoin, according to the Wall Street Journal, with a starting salary of $50,000.

This man, who is either a genius or certifiably insane, got paid ENTIRELY in Bitcoin for his first THREE YEARS at the job, and his starting salary was $50,000.

In early 2013, when this Olaf bloke started, Bitcoin was trading at $13.

Right now it's at $63,000. Per coin.

Do the math.

Unless he paper-handed and sold out when Bitcoin first started booming, this Olaf bloke is now RICH rich.