Check out our top 15 bitcoin facts, and be ready to have your mind blown!
It has been described as the “money of the internet” and recently enjoyed viral popularity due to its sudden and sharp growth in value. However, Bitcoin is very fickle – prone to sudden changes in value – and many people don’t know very much about it.
Where exactly did Bitcoin come from and why is it suddenly so popular? These are easy questions to answer, but its simplicity stops there; the more we learn about Bitcoin, the more confusing and strange it gets.
>> Check out where Bitcoin started[1]
Here are fifteen of the most important and interesting Bitcoin facts which should hopefully give you a basic understanding of this cryptic cryptocurrency!
1. We know who founded Bitcoin… but, not exactly
Bitcoin’s founder is Satoshi Nakamoto and (s)he is responsible for designing and engineering the entire project. But, that’s all we know. Satoshi Nakamoto is a pseudonym and, for all we know, it could be a team of people. Whoever they are, their estimated worth is $16.5 billion in Bitcoin and they were nominated for a Nobel Prize in Economic Sciences in 2015.
2. Bitcoin is limited in number
The individual – or team – behind Bitcoin set a pre-defined amount of Bitcoin before the project was complete, which is 21 million. This number is slowly being approached and it is getting harder to ‘mine’ new Bitcoin each day.
3. New Bitcoin is created through ‘mining’
‘Mining’ is the very complicated process by which new Bitcoin is produced. Mining Bitcoin is analogous to mining gold; there is a finite amount of gold and the more it is mined, the more difficult and resource-intensive it is to find. This is the same with Bitcoin.
4. The FBI has a huge amount of Bitcoin kept in wallets
In fact, the FBI has one of the largest Bitcoin wallets, period. When Silk Road – the dark web marketplace for drugs – was shut down, they seized its owner’s assets which included a Bitcoin wallet which is reported to be worth over $100 million.
5. One of Bitcoin’s first transactions was for pizza
In May 2010, two pizzas costing $25 were purchased for 10,000 Bitcoin. In January 2018, the value of 10,000 Bitcoin was around the $150 million mark.
6. It is more powerful than 500 of the most powerful supercomputers
As the experts put it, Bitcoin’s network has a computing power of 2,046,364 Pflop/s which, when compared to the computing power of the world’s 500 most powerful supercomputers – 274 Pflop/s – is eyewatering.
7. It is completely anonymous
It is not possible to find out the details of people you have sent Bitcoin too, or from whom you
