Talk about a degree that gives you bang for your buck.

Kristoffer Koch was writing a thesis on encryption in 2009 when he used about $27 to buy 5,000 bitcoins.

Life went on, and he forgot about his investment until bitcoin’s wild price swings earlier this year resulted in a slew of articles about bitcoin.

Bitcoin is a virtual currency that isn’t controlled by a central bank. Instead, bitcoins are created through a process called mining, in which a computer tries to solve a cryptographic problem. The total supply of bitcoins is capped, which has led to comparisons with assets like gold.

Koch’ original $27 investment is now worth about $886,000, Koch told Norwegian publication NRK. That’s a return of 3,281,500 percent in four years.

Koch has used one-fifth of his bitcoin stash to  buy an apartment in Oslo, Norway