Student who held 'send Bitcoin' sign during 'College Game Day' gets $24,000 in donations

A clever college student has somehow managed to amass over $24,000 by simply waving a sign at a television camera during ESPN's 'College Game Day' before the Alabama-Auburn game.

The student came armed with a banner Saturday that was a plea for financial help from his mother.  The tech-savvy fan also included the logo for Bitcoin, a virtual monetary payment network, and a QR code, which is a scan-sensitive icon used to represent information, according to cryptojunky.com., prominently on the sign.

QR codes are those black-and-white squares which often appear in magazines, allowing readers to link into websites with their phones for the purpose of online shopping and further reading, among other things.

In this case, the student — who has only been identified by his Reddit username, BitcoinPitcher2 — uses the Bitcoin user name "1HiMoMgBaAikFHgAt3M4YJtetp4HrnsiXu." The QR code was for the student's Bitcoin account, which is known as as an online "wallet."

A momentary screen shot of the TV show showing the man holding the sign made its way to social news website Reddit. Readers were able to enhance the QR to identify the code, allowing them to donate money.

As the story picked up traffic, more people started to give donations.

After what started out as a "joke," the small amounts of donations grew quickly and saw the guy receive over 100 transactions right away.

As it stands, the sign holder has received 22 Bitcoins, which are worth over $1,100 each.

The value of the received coins comes to a total of $24,361.50.

During the early stages of the incoming transactions, BitcoinPitcher2 said he would be donating the majority of the money to a charitable group called Sean's Outpost, which is a homeless shelter and outreach group located in Pensacola, Florida.

It is not known at present how much of the money will be donated.

If this guy is an Auburn fan, I'd say he had a pretty good day.