Bitcoin has been around for a while. To be accurate, for more than 12 years. If you already invested in this cryptocurrency, you might already know a lot about it. You are still learning about it every single day. But there are some interesting facts that you still don’t know about Bitcoin. In this article, we are going to take a look at some of these interesting features/facts that you might find amazing. So without wasting any time let’s directly dive into it.
1. Two Pizzas where the first-ever financial transaction using Bitcoin
What if I told you the first-ever financial transaction that took place using this revolutionary cryptocurrency was for two Pizzas? It happened on May 22, 2010. A person who had around 10k Bitcoins at that time decided to buy Pizza using it. We really feel bad for him considering how much Bitcoin has grown during this period. So anyway, as many people assume, the first transaction was not for something like a drug deal. It was rather wholesome.
2. Losing your private key means losing all your Bitcoins
Many people may already know this, but most of you may assume that it is very easy to recover your private key just like we restore the password of our email accounts. But things are not as easy as that when it comes to cryptocurrency. The Bitcoin transactions are done using the private key and public key which you will have access to. The private key is used to identify your Bitcoin wallet. Losing it means losing access to Bitcoin and everything you own in it. So make sure that you keep it secure and never lose it especially if you have invested a lot of money in Bitcoin.
3. Bitcoin network is more powerful than the supercomputers
Bitcoin is not a centralized system. It’s a distributed mining network connecting computers all around the globe. This means, obviously it is going to be more powerful than any known supercomputer man has ever made. According to the reports, currently, the Bitcoin network has a power scale of over 64 exaFLOPS. Almost all the supercomputers known to man combined can only produce around a single exaFLOP.
4. Bitcoin consumes more electricity than entire Ireland
Ireland, a country, consumes around 5,000-kilowatt-hours of electricity a year. All the Bitcoin mining networks altogether combined consume more than 6,000-kilowatt-hours of electricity. So there is no need to explain how vast and powerful the Bitcoin network is. For your information, Ireland is the second most populated city in entire Europe.
5. Bitcoin is banned in some countries
Even though at the moment, most of the countries seem to be accepting the crypto revolution, there are some countries such as Bolivia, Ecuador, Iceland, and Bangladesh where Bitcoin is completely banned. Several other countries also planning to regulate Bitcoin usage. Turkey is one of them. So you should be also careful and check if it is allowed to buy and sell Bitcoins in your country. If not, you may get into trouble.
6. There are only 21 million Bitcoins
If you think that Bitcoin will be produced as much as we mine and new Bitcoins will come to market, you are wrong. Similar to the natural, minerals and metals such as gold and silver, Bitcoin is also limited in abundance. The only difference is that Bitcoin is in the virtual world. There are only 21 million Bitcoins that can be ever mined. Once it hits that number, there will not be any more Bitcoins available to mine which might drastically increase the pricing, if things are going like it is these days.
7. Bitcoin is not completely-free
Most of you might be thinking that it is completely free to transfer Bitcoins. But it is not true. There is a fee for transferring Bitcoin and it can rise and fall based on several factors. As of writing this article, the transfer fee of Bitcoin is around 58.44 USD. It can change over time and can depend on the current value of Bitcoin. So in short, it is not free to transfer money using Bitcoin.
8. Almost half of the Bitcoins are owned by the creator himself
According to the reports, almost half of the Bitcoins that will ever exist on the internet are owned by the creator Satoshi Nakamoto. He owns more than 1 million Bitcoins. The rest of the world is fighting over the remaining by mining, buying, and selling. As of writing this article, it is worth almost 48.6 billion USD which is enough to consider him as one of the richest people on the planet.