On its 10th anniversary – Here are 10 mind-blowing facts on Bitcoin

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Bitcoin became one of the biggest talking points of
2017 when it suddenly gained the tag of being the
most rewarding investment opportunity. It was
created in 2008 by a mysterious man named Satoshi
Nakamoto after the bankruptcy of the investment
bank Lehman Brothers, which started a chain
reaction that led the world to the most serious
financial crises since the Great Depression of 1929.
The world’s first most renowned decentralized
digital currency completed 10 years last month, and
in that period it has grown in value from being
worth a few pennies to reaching a record high of
$19,783.21 last year. Since then, the value of bitcoin
has greatly depreciated, but it’s still considered by
many as the future of currency markets. On its 10th
anniversary, here are ten interesting facts on
Bitcoin.

No 10 – A few thousand lines of code make up
Bitcoin
It was on the evening of January 3, 2009, when
Satoshi Nakamoto launched the software for a new
digital currency, giving birth to bitcoin. The 36-
year-old computer coder claimed he had spent more
than a year writing the software, which has thirty-
one thousand lines of code. Just to put that into
context, the entire Windows 2000 operating system
is made up of 19 million lines of code. The software
basically distributes coins every ten minutes or so
through a process that resembles the lottery system.

No 9 – Bitcoin mining sucks up a lot and lot of
power
The process of obtaining bitcoins is called mining in
which the seekers have to play the lottery over and
over again. More powerful the computer, better the
chances to mine bitcoins. Collectively, the process of
mining bitcoins has enormous electricity usage. It’s
estimated that the power consumed by the entire
bitcoin network on a monthly basis is higher than
that of the Republic of Ireland, and results in the
generation of as much CO2 a year as 1 million
transatlantic flights.

No 8 – The words most expensive hard drive
What makes bitcoin more valuable is the fact that
only 21 million units can be mined in total, and
over the years many of them have been lost
forever. In 2013, a British man accidentally threw
away threw a hard drive containing more than 7500
bitcoins, which were mined over the period of four
years. The cryptocurrency is currently trading
around the $4000 mark, making the missing hard
drive worth around $30 million.

No 7 – The fattest Bitcoin is surprisingly owned
by the FBI
While no one really knows who has the biggest
bitcoin wallet in the world, at one point of time the
FBI was one of the largest renowned holders of the
cryptocurrency. In September 2013, the FBI shut
down the Silk Road online drug marketplace,
seizing more than 144,000 bitcoins belonging to the
operator of the illicit online marketplace. At current
market value, FBI’s bitcoin wallet would have been
worth more than half a billion dollars. However, it’s
believed that federal agency sold a large amount of
their Bitcoin holdings or even all.

No 6 – It has been a rough ride
Ever since bitcoin has gained popularity, it has
faced severe criticism and skepticism from many
different quarters. At least eight Nobel laureates in
Economic Sciences have identified the bitcoin as an
economic bubble, while various major media outlets
have deemed the cryptocurrency as a Ponzi scheme.
Renowned newspapers have pronounced bitcoin
dead over 30 times, and the cryptocurrency has
even witnessed 9 historical crashes, yet it has
weathered all storms and refused to die.

No 5 – The largest Bitcoin transaction ever
In 2013, the cryptocurrency world witnessed the
single biggest bitcoin transaction in which a total of
194,993 bitcoins changed hands. The transaction
represented 1.6% of all the bitcoins that were in
circulation at that time, amounting a total of $147
million according to the value on that day. No one
had any information on the identity of the mystery
seller; some even speculated that it could be Satoshi
Nakamoto himself.

No 4 – Bitcoin leaves for outer space
A major bitcoin cloud mining company called
Genesis Mining pulled off a unique stunt in 2016 to
spread awareness on the cryptocurrency and tell
the world its benefits as the standard bearer for
digital currencies. The company became the first to
send bitcoin to space. A weather balloon was sent
20kms into the sky to reach the near space, after
which a team at Genesis Mining conducted a pear-
to-pear transaction to send one bitcoin to the wallet
in space.

No 3 – Bitcoin leaves for outer space
While Bitcoin is the world’s first and still the most
widely used decentralized ledger currency,
thousands of bitcoin clones have come into
existence which includes the likes of litecoin and
ethereum. It’s estimated that over 1600 bitcoin
clones have been made over the last 10 years. While
many of them have managed to gain popularity in
the cryptocurrency world, most of them either have
no value or have gone inactive. In 2013, a bitcoin
clone by the name of Dogecoin was created as a
joke which has a Shiba Inu dog in its logo.

No 2 – Winklevoss twins
Winklevoss Twins, who are best known for suing
Mark Zuckerberg in 2008 for stealing the idea of
Facebook, became the world’s first known bitcoin
billionaire in 2017 when the price of cryptocurrency
was touching new highs every day. The twins
invested $11 million into bitcoins from the $65
million they received from the Facebook lawsuit.
They are considered as one two of the most
dominant figures in the world of cryptocurrencies.
The twins have been trying to list their
cryptocurrency exchange-traded fund on stock
exchange.

No 1 The mystery billionaire creator
As mentioned earlier, Satoshi Nakamoto is the
person who created bitcoin as the world’s first
decentralized digital currency. Claiming to be a 36-
year old computer coder of Japanese descent,
Nakamoto created the Bitcoin software in 2008 and
made it open source in January 2009, after which he
went missing in 2010. According to some estimates,
Nakamoto still owns over 1 million bitcoins, taking
his net worth to over $4 billion according to the
current price of bitcoin. However, it is believed the
Satoshi Nakamoto is a pseudonym and bitcoin was
developed by a group of people of non-Japanese
descent, living in the United States and various
European countries.

Source : Sayan Chakravarty     
 http://luxurylaunches.com