15 Fascinating Bitcoin Facts You May Never Know

Bitcoin is a cryptocurrency and worldwide payment system. It is the first decentralized digital currency, as the system works without a central bank or single administrator. The network is peer-to-peer and transactions take place between users directly, without an intermediary. These transactions are verified by network nodes through the use of cryptography and recorded in a public distributed ledger called a blockchain. People like bitcoin because it’s a convenient, secure and cost-effective way to transfer value anywhere in the world. From paying rent at home to purchasing a cup of coffee in your favorite city: you can use bitcoin as easily as cash or credit.

Most people use Bitcoin because they think it is cool, a good investment and fun to buy things online. If you are going to start your first bitcoin investment, then you should know some interesting bitcoin facts to broaden your knowledge. From the history of bitcoin to some unique bitcoin facts you may never know, we have compiled them all in this article. Let’s get started!

1. The Unknown Creator

Bitcoin was presented to the world in 2009 by a person or group of persons going by the name Satoshi Nakamoto. Late in 2010, they disappeared from the Internet, and nobody has seen or heard from him since. Nobody actually knows if he is alive or dead, just as his identity is a mystery. People could only communicate with him via forums and emails.

The author of the first Bitcoin whitepaper is known only by the pseudonym Satoshi Nakamoto. Although several persons have asserted or were believed to be Satoshi, their genuine identity has never been confirmed or made public. Given the current value of BTC, Satoshi would be worth $1 billion since it is purported they own close to 1 million BTC.

2. The Satoshi is The Smallest Unit of Bitcoin

The smallest portion of a bitcoin is referred to as a satoshi as a mark of appreciation for Bitcoin’s inventor. A satoshi is worth around 0.00005 USD, which is an extremely, really low value. To create one bitcoin, you need roughly 100,000,000 satoshis. According to the sometimes fluctuating price of bitcoin, 15,800 satoshis are required to equal one dollar.

One hundred millionth of a bitcoin is represented by a satoshi. Smaller denominations are required for smaller transactions since bitcoin has experienced an exponential surge in value. Bitcoin transactions are made simpler by using small denominations that are also readable by individuals.

3. Losing Bitcoin Private Key Means Losing All Your Bitcoins

In addition to losing your personal identity, losing your Bitcoin private key, also results in the loss of all the bitcoins stored in your wallet. According to YahooFinance, at least 20% of all Bitcoin addresses are ghost addresses due to lost private keys. This suggests that a significant portion of users have forgotten their addresses and are unable to access their wallets.

Bitcoin doesn’t have a company to help you retrieve your private key or tokens.   Furthermore, nobody keeps passwords for digital wallets. Bitcoin’s main goal, according to Satoshi Nakamoto, was to enable anybody to form a digital account, store funds, and transfer money without interference from a centralized authority.

4. Liberland, The First Micronation That Accepts Bitcoin

Liberland, the first micronation located between Serbia and Croatia, was founded in April 2015. It was founded by Vít Jedlička, a politician, publicist, activist and president of Liberland  Bitcoin is used as Liberland’s legal currency. The government thinks that recording electronic, financial, and physical assets can be done securely and transparently using Bitcoin and the blockchain principles that underpin it.

Liberland will undoubtedly make a significant contribution to the practical understanding of Bitcoin and blockchain technology, even if it ultimately fails. In addition to this, and should it be successful, the new European nation will undoubtedly become a sacred site for Bitcoin fans.

5. Bitcoin Mining Consume A Lot of Power

It doesn’t make sense conceptually for Bitcoin to use a lot of electricity. To purchase and sell bitcoin, you simply need to point and click or tap on your smartphone. However, Bitcoin’s massive carbon emissions footprint is driven by its decentralized architecture. Bitcoin requires computers to tackle increasingly difficult math problems in order to verify transactions. It takes a lot more energy to operate this proof-of-work consensus process than most people understand.

Here’s the comparison of how much power is needed for bitcoin mining. Each year, Ireland uses about 5,000 kilowatt hours of electricity. Meanwhile, about 60 terawatt-hours of electricity is used by all the bitcoin mining farms combined. Ireland, the second-most populous city in Europe with an area of 84,421 square kilometers, uses less electricity overall than all of these farms put together.

6. Bitcoin Is Limited

The maximum number of bitcoins that can be traded is 21 million.  As of January 2022, 18.9 million bitcoins had already been distributed, and another 2.1 million were expected. The designers of the Bitcoin cryptocurrency, who went by the pseudonym Satoshi Nakamoto, created the cryptocurrency essentially as digital gold and set a limitation on its supply to resemble the limited amount of real gold.

But don’t worry, we will still be able to mine bitcoins until 2140. The average time it takes to create a new block of Bitcoin is 10 minutes, thus fresh bitcoins are added to the supply of the cryptocurrency every so often. By design, after every 210,000 blocks, or roughly every four years, the number of bitcoins created per block is cut by 50%.

7. The Letter “B” Gives Different Meaning

Here are trivia Bitcoin facts you may never know: The phrases “Bitcoin” and “bitcoin” with a lowercase “B” refer to two distinct concepts. Typically, Bitcoin with a capital “B” refers to the protocol and payment network. The term “Bitcoin” in all capital letters is also frequently used to refer to the ecosystem as a whole. When speaking generally about Bitcoin, the convention is to refer to it as “Bitcoin” with a capital “B”.

Typically, bitcoin with a lowercase “b” written as “bitcoin” refers to bitcoin as the currency. Use “bitcoin” in lowercase when referring to the amount of the currency that was transacted or when your attention is primarily on that currency and not on the larger payment network or protocol.

8. Bitcoin Network Is Faster Than Supercomputers

The amount of processing and computing power that is being added to the network through mining is referred to as Bitcoin’s hash rate. The network of digital money is maintained through the crucial activity of bitcoin mining. The processing power of the entire Bitcoin network is around 80,704,290 petaflops.

The Summit, the supercomputer with the highest processing speed in the world, operates at 122.3 petaflops, or one quadrillion floating-point operations per second. However, a supercomputer is capable of performing numerous tasks, whereas the Bitcoin network just adds new blocks to the blockchain.

9. The First Bitcoin Purchase Was For Pizza

Here are more Bitcoin facts why it makes a good investment. When bitcoins were first created, they were practically useless because one BTC could be purchased for just a few pennies. But it wasn’t until May 22nd, 2010, that someone used bitcoin to buy pizza. This transaction was significant since at the time, no retailer accepted bitcoins as payment for goods and services.

Laszlo Hanyecz traded two Papa John’s pizzas for 10,000 bitcoins. This was the first transaction utilizing bitcoin that was officially recorded. Today, May 22 is recognized as “Bitcoin Pizza Day,” honoring that outstanding accomplishment. In 2010, 10,000 BTC was worth $41. Meanwhile 10,000 Bitcoins are currently valued at about $25.8 million today.

10. Bitcoin Can’t Be Banned

Many experts contend that since cryptocurrencies are merely bits of computer code, they cannot be outlawed. Because sending cryptocurrency from one wallet to another is the same as sharing music on a pen drive, a regulatory restriction won’t truly prevent people from sending each other cryptocurrency. You can use Bitcoin as long as you have an internet connection and a Bitcoin wallet.

However, other nations, including Bangladesh, Bolivia, Thailand, and Vietnam, have attempted to outlaw it among many others. Meanwhile, other nations, including Australia, Russia, Japan, and Venezuela, have recognized Bitcoin as legal cash and are now regulating it.

11. Around 20% of Bitcoin Has Been Lost Forever

According to crypto analytics company Chainalysis, 20% of Bitcoin has either been lost or is trapped in unreachable wallets. That is equivalent to 3.76 million BTC now, which is almost $190 billion. There are a couple options, if you’re wondering how that’s feasible. First, according to Decrypt, the top coin’s unknown creator, Satoshi Nakamoto, owns around 1.1 million BTC. Nakamoto is reportedly not going to touch those coins at any point.

Another source of out-of-circulation coins is the sad fact that some people passed away without giving anyone access to their Bitcoin. Additionally, losing private keys is a significant factor. To access or trade your coins, you need crypto keys, which work like a PIN for a bank account. Sadly, there is no convenient “forgot password” feature. You won’t likely find those coins again if you lose your keys.

12. Hardware Crypto Wallets To Securely Store Your Assets Offline

A hardware wallet typically consists of a USB stick that securely contains a user’s private keys. This has significant advantages over hot wallets because private keys are never in contact with your network-connected computer or potentially vulnerable software, making it immune to viruses that may be on your machine. And lastly, they are challenging to hack.

Cryptocurrency is gone, though, if you forget your wallet, password, or recovery phrase. There are also several accounts of people misplacing their wallets. In fact, a man in the UK has been requesting permission to examine his local rubbish dump site for years because he thinks that his hard disk, which contains 7,500 BTC or about $380 million, is there.

13. Bitcoin Is Legal Tender In El Salvador

El Salvador became the first nation to recognize Bitcoin as legal cash in September 2021. The contentious decision was announced earlier this year at Bitcoin Miami by President Nayib Bukele. Although it will now be accepted alongside the U.S. dollar as a currency, bitcoin will not take its place. However, El Salvador’s bitcoin bet is failing after a few months.

Although the government had promised to provide each citizen who opened a national digital wallet $30, the entire scheme has been opposed by many El Salvadorans. Due to the $30 government incentive, there were several cases of fraud, identity theft, and phishing attempts where individuals tried to exploit someone else’s information to obtain the $30 incentive. Additionally, the World Bank declined to assist the nation with implementation due to worries about the environment and transparency.

14. It Takes 10 Minutes To Mine 1 Bitcoin

Bitcoin mining continues to be one of the most profitable cryptocurrency activities for people looking to make money. Bitcoin is still being mined using electricity and mining machines purchased by miners. One Bitcoin typically takes around 10 minutes to create, although this is only true for strong processors. The kind of Bitcoin mining equipment you are using will determine how quickly you can mine.

As a compromise between the time it takes for the first confirmation and the amount of work that is lost because of chain splits, Satoshi expressly settled on ten minutes. It takes some time for other miners to learn about a newly mined block, thus during that time they are actually competing with the new block rather than adding to it. Based on prior calculations, Bitcoin can typically process 2,759.12 transactions every ten minutes. In other words, only 4.6 transactions per second can now be guaranteed by the Bitcoin blockchain.

15. Zhao Changpeng, The Bitcoin Billionaire

Since Bitcoin has become a great investment, here is the Bitcoin billionaire you probably didn’t know. With a current net worth of $18.5 billion, Zhao Changpeng is really the person with the highest net worth in the cryptocurrency industry. That number was US$96 billion just months ago though, before the crypto market began skyrocketing.

Moreover, Binance, the world’s largest cryptocurrency exchange by trading volume, was founded and is led by Zhao. He used to once work at McDonalds flipping burgers but now, he is the biggest crypto billionaire.

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