All of you here must have heard (or even have some) of bitcoin. It's the most popular cryptocurrency, the "mysterious money of the internet”,(and of course, the king of all the other cryptos out there).
Some people are actively using Bitcoin both for investment and daily transactions, but there is still a large majority who have not started acquiring bitcoin (and probably have no plans on doing so). Part of the reason has to do with people not fully knowing about it.
So just incase you don't know, here are 5 facts you need to know about Bitcoin.
5. The first bitcoin purchase was for pizzas.
I bet you didn't know May 22 is celebrated as Bitcoin Pizza Day? (at least i didn't until a few weeks ago).
Initially, bitcoins were virtually worthless when they were first mined because it literally cost cents to buy a BTC. It was until 22 May 2010, that someone purchased something with bitcoins.This purchase was a big deal because no retailer was accepting bitcoins at that time for goods and services.
So on 22 May 2010, two Papa John’s Pizzas were exchanged by Laszlo Hanyecz for 10,000 BTC. This is the first official documented purchase of goods using bitcoins.
At that time, the worth of 10,000 BTC was $41. 10,000 bitcoins is worth around $370 million dollars at the time of writing this article.
4. The inventor of bitcoin is a mystery
Yup, you read that right. Bitcoins founder is unknown.
Bitcoin was introduced to the world in 2009 by a person (or a group of people) known as Satoshi Nakamoto. He (or they) disappeared off the Internet in late 2010, and no one has heard from him (or them) ever since. His (or their) identity is shrouded in mystery, and nobody really knows if he (or they) is or are even alive. The only communication people had with him (or they) was through emails and forums.
His (or their) Bitcoin wallet holds around 980,000 bitcoins, which is currently around $36.3 billion. Seriously, I wonder why he (or they) is not in the Forbes billionaires lists.
3. There is a Limited Number of Bitcoins
There is a limit to how many bitcoins can exist in the market: 21 million. 17 million bitcoins have been mined and are already in circulation; thats almost 80 percent of the 21 million. But to all those who plan to start mining bitcoin, don’t worry because there is still hope; until 2140 (the next 119 years), we will still have bitcoins to mine.
2. losing your Bitcoin private key also means you lose your bitcoins.
If you are registered here on read.cash, or any other crypto platform, you know what i mean. You have to save those keys and seed phrases because if you lose them, you can say goodbye to any cryptos you think you have. Its basically the same with bitcoin.
Have you heard of a man named James Howells? He is an IT guy, and he lost 7,500 bitcoins in November 2013. While he was cleaning his desk at home, he threw away his hard disk containing the private keys of bitcoins which he had previously mined back in 2010.
He realized this when he read the news of a Norweigan man who made a fortune by buying BTC at a low price. He searched and searched, but could not find his hard disk.
At present, the worth of 7,500 BTC is approximately $276.8 million. Without the private key, his bitcoins are lost forever, no one can use them. (If this was to happen to me right now, i'd hit myself hard in head till i remember those keys!😎)
Until this point in time, it is estimated that around 25% of all bitcoins have been forever lost.
1. Liberland
Liberland is a micronation between Croatia and Serbia, created in April 2015, and founded by Vít Jedlička, a politician, publicist, activist and president of Liberland. The official currency of Liberland is (you guessed it right) bitcoin. The government believes that Bitcoin and its fundamental ideas of blockchain can provide a secure and transparent method for recording electronic, financial, and physical assets.
So, do you know of any facts that i may have missed? Or maybe you know some facts i haven't heard of? Let me know in the comments. And subscribe to me for more infomative list articles like this.