Bitcoin, the most famous and most sought cryptocurrency in the world. The one virtual currency which almost everyone now knows about. The reason behind such great fame is the following
Yes, this is the price of one Bitcoin; $9443 or about Rs. 6,10,000!!
And you know something more interesting, this price is after a sudden downfall in the price of the bitcoin as before it was about more than $11,000.
Bitcoin is also one of the most speculated thing in 2018 but there are many unknown great facts about bitcoin that you never knew. So here we are counting down on our list of Top 10 Insane Facts About Bitcoin that you must know.
Buckle up now, as we're diving straight to the list.
#10. The Amount Of Energy Wasted
When everyone talks of Bitcoin its all about the value, or the volatility or how amazing it is etc. No one talks about how much energy its consuming. The computing power of the Bitcoin network is currently around 8,000,000 TH/s.
This comes at a cost.
Imagine how many enthusiasts are currently tweaking their 20 GPU 4kW mining rig. Or how many systems have been compromised to mine 24/7/365.
There are a lot of variables to take into consideration such as the source of energy and average energy consumed per hash but the energy consumption of the Bitcoin network is estimated at 18 TWh / year which is enough to power around 1.7 million US households.
Even though this is only around 0.09% of the worlds energy consumption its still a lot for a single transaction system to consume.
Compare this to other transaction networks such as Visa and you can see how much difference there is:
And when we take into consideration that Visa averages around 1,667 transactions per second while Bitcoin averages around 3–4 transactions per second. Who do you think is running more efficiently?
So why is it wasted?
The creation of a new Bitcoin requires all of this collective computational power to perform complex calculations which have no real value other than to show that is has been done.
This ‘Proof-of-work’ method of embedding integrity into the Concurrency is exponentially unsustainable as the currency grows.
Lets say person A is mining away, trying to get the next block reward.
Person B is also mining for the same goal.
For simplicity imagine if Person A and B were the only miners on the network. Only one of them would be rewarded the next block which essentially means that the hashing that one of them has done, hasn’t really done anything.
#9. How Many Are There?
Bitcoin's supply is limited to 21 million - a number that is expected to be reached around the year 2140.
So far, around 16.7 million bitcoins have been released into the system, with 12.5 new ones released roughly every 10 minutes via a process called "mining", in which a global network of computers competes to solve complex algorithms in reward for the new bitcoins.
#8. Bitcoin Billionaires
Bitcoin has performed better than every central-bank-issued currency in every year since 2011 except for 2014, when it performed worse than any traditional currency. So far in 2017, it is up around 1000 percent.
If you had bought $1,000 of bitcoin at the start of 2013 and had never sold any of it, you would now be sitting on $80 million. (Trust me this broke my heart too)
Many people consider bitcoin to be more of a speculative instrument than a currency, because of its volatility, increasingly high transaction fees, and the fact that relatively few merchants accept it.
#7. Exchange Heists
More than 980,000 bitcoins have been stolen from exchanges, either by hackers or insiders. That's a total of more than $10 billion at current exchange rates. Few have been recovered.
#6. Mystery Creator
Despite many attempts to find the creator of bitcoin, and a number of claims, we still do not know who Satoshi Nakamoto is, or was.
Australian computer scientist and entrepreneur Craig Wright convinced some prominent members of the bitcoin community that he was Nakamoto in May 2016, but he then refused to provide the evidence that most of the community said was necessary.
It is not clear whether Satoshi Nakamoto, assumed to be a pseudonym, was a name used by a group of developers or by one individual.
Nor is it clear that Nakamoto is still alive - the late computer scientist Hal Finney's name is sometimes put forward. Developer Nick Szabo has denied claims that he is Nakamoto, as has tech entrepreneur Elon Musk more recently.
#5. Most Expensive Pizza Bought
On May 22, 2010, a developer from Florida bought two pizzas for 10,000 Bitcoins, which was around $25 at that time.
A guy from the UK made the order to the developer’s home address and took the crypto-funds. Today, 10,000 would be be worth around $83 million - this could buy so many pizzas.
#4. Most Valuable Bitcoin
2 Bitcoin addresses hold 1.65% of all Bitcoins, which are worth over $2 billion.
#3. Sheer Luck
A Norwegian student bought $27 worth of Bitcoin and forgot about the transaction. After a few years, he found that his Bitcoins were worth $886,000.
#2. Modern Treasure
James Howells, who works in IT, created 7500 Bitcoins in 2009 without so much effort. However, he didn’t realize the importance of that wallet, and threw away the hard drive.
The hard from his Dell laptop should be somewhere in the trash in a Wales landfill. 7500 Bitcoins are worth over $60 million today.
#1. Total Market Cap Of BTC
Some experts expect Bitcoin to reach $100,000 and even go beyond. Under such conditions, the total market cap of BTC will be measured in trillions.
There you have it, Top 10 Insane Facts About Bitcoin that you must know and are unknown to many people.
I hope you liked this amazing treat of unknown interesting facts about bitcoin and if you did, make sure to share this with your friends and family so that they also might know the awesomeness of this great trend called bitcoin.
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