7 Interesting Facts About Bitcoin That You Must Know!
- Bitcoins are limited in number
You might’ve heard about bitcoin mining, the process using which bitcoins are generated digitally. So, does this mean there could be an infinite number of bitcoins? That’s not the case. A pre-defined schedule has limited the number of bitcoins. They are slowly approaching a total of 21 million and the mining process is getting harder with each passing day.
- Pizza was the first thing (good) purchased using bitcoin
After the first bitcoin transaction took place between Satoshi and Hal Finney in 2009, the first recorded purchase was made for buying pizza worth $25. To do so, 10,000 bitcoins were spent.
- Bitcoin network is much powerful than supercomputers
According to the experts, Bitcoin networks has a computing power of 2,046,364 Pflop/s. This is my personal favorite fact about bitcoin. If you go ahead and combine the computing power of the 500 most powerful supercomputers, you’ll get a combined fever of 274 Pflop/s.
- The FBI has one of the world’s largest bitcoin wallets
When the FBI shut down the operations of the Silk Road, it also seized the owner’s assets. In that process, the FBI also became one of the world’s wealthiest bitcoin owners, A report from the Wired magazine claims that the FBI controls as much as $120 million.
- It’s impossible to know the sender/receiver details
Bitcoin addresses are a long string of 34 alphanumeric characters. Using that address, it’s impossible to tell the recipient. Probably, this is the reason why most of the illegal transactions are carried out using bitcoins. To protect the privacy even further, most wallet programs assign the users a portfolio ID, which is also used as a username.
- The Number of Crypto Wallets Exceeds 6 Million
Nobody knows for sure how many crypto wallets are floating out there, in the online hyperspace, but it is estimated that there are between 6 million to 12 million active wallets storing cryptocurrency. More than half of cryptocurrency wallets offer storage for more than one cryptocurrency.
- 21 Million Bitcoins and Not a Single More
Believe it or not, that is true. There is no infinite supply of Bitcoin and the final figure is already known – it is 21 million units. After 2140, when the last Bitcoin is supposed to be mined, no new ones will be available.
