15 Interesting Facts about Bitcoin


 

Photo of Bitcoin

A Photo of Gold Coins Depicting Bitcoin Logo. Photo by Kanchanara. Unsplash.

Bitcoin is the first-ever cryptocurrency founded in 2008 by Satoshi Nakamoto as open-source software to transfer money.
It is the digital currency that utilizes cryptocurrency technology and controlled by a decentralized authority unlike the traditional Fiat currencies. Cryptocurrency is the technology that acts as a medium for facilitating the conduct of different financial transactions which are safe and secure.
Bitcoin unlike other currencies is transferable only on the peer-to-peer bitcoin network and its transactions are verified by network nodes through cryptography and recorded in a public distributed ledger called a blockchain.
The bitcoin blockchain is a public ledger that records bitcoin transactions. It is implemented as a chain of blocks, each block containing a cryptographic hash of the previous block up to the genesis block in the chain.
A network of communicating nodes running bitcoin software maintains the blockchain. Transactions of the form payer sends bitcoins to payee are broadcasted to this network using readily available software applications.
Network nodes validate and transactions them to their copy of the ledger, and subsequently broadcast these ledger additions to other nodes.
To achieve independent verification of the chain of ownership, each network node stores its own copy of the blockchain.
The unit of account of the bitcoin system is the bitcoin. Currency codes for representing bitcoin are BTC and XBT. Its Unicode character is ₿. One bitcoin is divisible to eight decimal places. Units for smaller amounts of bitcoin are the mill bitcoin (mBTC), equal to a thousandth of bitcoin, and the Santoshi (sat).

1.Founded by a Mysterious “Person” Satoshi Nakamoto

In 2009, a mysterious user  Satoshi Nakamoto introduced Bitcoin to the world and later vanished off the internet in late 2010.

The founder of Bitcoin is not know to be a  person or entity but is only named Satoshi Nakamoto and no one knows who is behind it.

It is not clear whether Nakamoto is a person or a group of people.

Since then, he has not been seen or heard of and nobody knows whether he is alive or dead.

Before his disappearance, he only used to communicate with people through emails and forums.

He is among the richest people on the planet with his Bitcoin wallet holding around 980,000 Bitcoins.

2. Smallest Unit of a Bitcoin is Known as Satoshi

Satoshi is the smallest unit of a Bitcoin and, it was named after its creator, ‘Satoshi Nakamoto as a sign of respect and honor.

which is the smallest possible division, and named in homage to bitcoin’s creator, representing one hundred millionth bitcoin. Satoshis are one mBTC

One Satoshi is equivalent to around 0.0001673 U.S. dollars as of today, which is a very low value.

For you to make one Bitcoin one is required to have approximately one hundred million of Satoshis.

Although Bitcoin values keeps on fluctuating a lot and as of (16th November 2022) one is required to make a dollar with approximately is 5934.634 Satoshi.

3.Pizza Day-Bitcoin Transaction Commemoration

 A Pizza

A Photo of a Pizza Similar to  that bought on the first Bitcoin transaction. Photo by Thomas Schweighofer. Unsplash.

The first bitcoin transaction was by Laszlo Hanyecz on 22nd May 2010 when he bought two papa John’s pizzas at 10,000 BTC that was equivalent to about USD 41 at the time, and since then this Bitcoin transaction day is being commemorated every year as part of Bitcoin Folklore.

This transaction if valued today its approximately  US Dollar 500 million meaning each pizza would be valued at USD 250 million making it the most expensive pizza ever

4.Private Key Must Be Kept Secret

In the block chain, Bitcoin are registered to Bitcoin address that requires picking a random valid private key and computing the corresponding Bitcoin address.

Computation of Bitcoin is done very fast but on reverse, computing the private key of a given Bitcoin address, is practically unfeasible.

Moreover, the number of valid private keys is so vast that someone can compute a key pair that is already in use and has fund.

To be able to spend your Bitcoin one must know the corresponding private key and digitally sign the transaction, then network verifies the signature using the public key, and private key is never revealed.

If one loses private keys, Bitcoin, network will not recognize any other evidence of ownership, thus coins became unusable and effectively lost.

Research has shown at least 60 percent of all Bitcoin addresses are ghosts because most of the user has lost their addresses and they cannot access their wallets.

5.PayPal Allows Bitcoin To Trade On Its Platform

In October 2020, PayPal began supporting crypto currencies such as Bitcoin, Bitcoin Cash, Ethereum and Litecoin. It also extended support to Venmo and international markets in early 2021.

This allowed  PayPal users  to buy, sell, and hold crypto and use it to check out for select purchases.

6.There has been a Bitcoin Black Market 

In 2011, Amateur programmer Ross Ulbricht created and operated Silk Road, an online black market used for hosting money laundering activities and illegal drug transactions using Bitcoin.

Ross Ulbricht used online pseudonym, “Dread Pirate Roberts” to operate in black market.

In 2013 The U.S. government seized approximately 173,991 Bitcoins from Silk Road, an online black market.

He was convicted with seven charges related to Silk Road and was sentenced to life imprisonment.

Although, government sold all those Bitcoins in series of auction in 2014 and 2015, Ulbricht challenged the legality of the forfeiture.

Feds seized Ulbricht’s laptop and found keys to unlock only a fraction of the Bitcoins.

Seven years later, Department of Justice (DOJ) filed a civil forfeiture of 69,370 Bitcoins worth over Us Dollar1 Billion from an unnamed person who court named as individual X.

7.Several Countries Has Banned Bitcoin

Many countries have no specific legislation relative to the status of Bitcoin as a currency, while in other countries is illegal.

Some countries such as Canada and America, have wholeheartedly accepted Bitcoin.

Due to its decentralized nature or links to activities like money laundering or because it is seem to be a threat to current monetary systems.

There are countries, including India, Thailand, and Iran, that have asked their residents to be careful while using crypto currencies but haven’t completely banned it however, they do not accept it as legal tender.

In September 2017, china banned trading in Bitcoin and Bitcoin prices fell drastically from Us Dollar 9,052 to Us Dollar 6,914 by February 2018.

Other Countries like Qatar, Afghanistan, Vietnam, .Bolivia have banned the Cryptocurrency altogether.

8.Processing Power

Bitcoin mining is a record keeping service that’s done through the use of the computer processing power.

It’s done by keeping block chain consistent, complete, and unalterable by repeatedly grouping newly broadcast transactions into a block, which is then rebroadcasted to the network and verified by recipient nodes.

To be accepted by the rest of the network, a new block must contain a proof-of-work (POW), which require miners to find a number called nonce and the result is numerically smaller than the network’s difficulty target.

This is enough proof for any node in the network to verify but its time consuming and expensive to generate.

It requires special servers to be used for that specific purpose so as to maintain high processing speed, and the faster the block added, faster one is rewarded with Bitcoins.

As for secure cryptographic hash, miners must try different nonce values before result happens to be less than the difficulty target.

As the profitability of Bitcoin mining dropped in 2022, top crypto miners’ share prices have also fallen.

9.There is Limited Number of Bitcoins

A coin with a Key

A brass token with a private key hidden beneath a tamper-evident security hologram. Photo by Steve Jurvetson. Wikimedia.

There’s a limit to how many Bitcoins can exist in the market and it’s currently at 19,208,925 in existence.  As of this moment, 17 million Bitcoins are already in circulation that means almost 80 percent of the Us Dollar 19,208,925 million have already been mined.

Bitcoins can still be mined in future but it will be determined on how miners will be rewarded.

Currently, miners with 6.25 BTC roughly Us Dollar 143,000 for each block added to the Blockchain, and every four years the reward is reduced by half.

This number changes about every 10 minutes when the new blocks are mined, and right now, new block adds 6.25 Bitcoins into circulation.

10.Bitcoin Accounts Are Major Target For Hackers

In 2020, high profile  and celebrities accounts of Elon Musk, Barack Obama, Kanye West  among others were hacked and scammers were able to transfer 400 payments in Bitcoin.

The scam involved posting tweets from the accounts of high profile figures saying that they would double any Bitcoin payments sent to the same via Bitcoin wallet. Reportedly 130 high-profile Twitter accounts were compromised by the hackers made up of three people two of whom where people in their teens.

11.Mining of Bitcoin Consume a lot of Power

 Ireland consumes approximately 5,000 kilowatt-hours of electricity each year. All the Bitcoin mining farms together consume about 60 terawatt-hours of electricity, which is approximately 6060 kilowatt-hours which is a large amount of power. The entire country of Ireland, which has the second-most-populated city in Europe and has 84,421 square kilometers of area, consumes less electricity than all these farms combined.

The Digiconomist’s Bitcoin Energy Consumption Index estimated that one Bitcoin transaction takes 1,449 kWh to complete, or the equivalent of approximately 50 days of power for the average US household.

To put that into money terms, the average cost per kWh in the US is close to 12 cents. That means a Bitcoin transaction would generate approximately an energy bill of Us Dollar173.

12.”B” for Bicton

The use of alphabetical letter “B” in the Bitcoin world is totally different from the normal use, the use of  Bitcoin with capital “B” and small “b” is fundamentally different and do not carry the same meaning.

A Bitcoin with capital “B” is associated with the Bitcoin protocol and payment network. It is also referred to as the ecosystem as a whole as it is the equivalent of a ledger that stores information regarding transactions. While the Bitcoin with small “b”, is commonly referred to the actual cryptocurrency that is used to perform the transactions.

13.No Individual or Organization Control Bitcoin

The bitcoin is a decentralized digital currency that can be transferred on peer-to-peer within the Bitcoin network  and therefore  its is not subject to any national or international control outside its own network.

The Bitcoin like other crypto currencies  cannot be influenced by government or financial regulatory authorities .It is not subject to any jurisdiction framework that is applied to the fiat currencies that are influenced with use of policy tools such as inflation and interest rates which affects their valuation.

The currency is only affected by forces of demand and supply although it is slightly be affected by factors  such as Media coverage which significantly affects the market confidence, mining and transaction costs.

13.It is  an Official Currency In Liberland

Liberland, also known as the Free Republic of Liberland, a micronation in southeast Europe claiming an uninhabited parcel of disputed land on the western bank of the Danube, between Croatia and Serbia, formed on April 2015 by the Czech right-Libertarian politician and activist Vit Jedlicka has recognized Bitcoin as a legal tender. The  government believes that Bitcoin and its underlying concepts of Blockchain Technology provide a secure and transparent method for recording electronic, financial, and physical assets.

15.It Main Competitor is Dogecoin 

A Golden Coins Representing Dogecoin. Photo by Kanchanara. Unsplash.

Bitcoin has been synonymous with crypto currency  with majority of people use the the terms interchangeably. However in 2013 Dogecoin  commonly referred  as DOGE was introduced and introduced competition in the cryptocurrency makert

The creators of Dogecoin invented the Cryptocurrency around the image of the surprised-looking Shiba Inu dog which was circulated as a popular meme in 2013 when Dogecoin was introduced. It also received support from Telsla Businessman Elon Musk leading to high popularity and the market capitalization grew very fast becoming the hottest cryptocurrencies in 2021.

This idea worn the heart of many netizens who are the major investors of crypto currency 

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