Interesting facts about Bitcoin

It used to be a dream and fantasy, but nowadays it is really possible: a decentralized digital currency that can be used more and more in everyday life. There are many variants of Bitcoin today, but Bitcoin still remains the most important crypto currency. Interested in getting started with Bitcoin? In this article we list a number of interesting facts and trivia that can help you if you want to start buying Bitcoin.

1. The FBI is one of the richest holders of Bitcoin

Cryptocurrency is very useful to use if you are a criminal. This new technology makes it very easy to transfer money for drug trafficking, for example. These kinds of deals often take place on the dark web where criminals are unstoppable. However, the FBI has managed to bust a number of dark web websites, seizing many crypto wallets. For example, they have obtained wallets of 30,000, 96,000 and 144,000 Bitcoins. It turns out that these are really decent amounts of Bitcoin, because there are only about 17 million Bitcoins in circulation worldwide. This makes the FBI one of the largest Bitcoin holders in the world!

2. What was worth $100 in 2010 is worth $100 million today

Investors know that money trading involves risk. In retrospect it is very easy to say that you could have become rich with Bitcoin. In 2010, there were a few curious enough to invest $100 in Bitcoin. That risk paid off, because the price of Bitcoin has risen enormously over the years. $100 worth of Bitcoin back then is worth a whopping $100 million today! Once Bitcoins are in your possession, storing Bitcoins is your own responsibility, and just like storing ‘ordinary money’ there are risks. You can store Bitcoins on your own wallet. If you have Bitcoins on a broken hard drive, recovering the hard drive is possible, and more than worth it. Keeping Bitcoins and other cryptocurrencies properly and safely on your PC deserves good attention anyway.

3. Bitcoins cannot be spent twice due to the blockchain

The problem with fiat money is that it is prone to inaccurate spending and fraud. If the database is not in order, the coin can be spent twice. The information of the transaction is not linked to the currency. This is the case with Bitcoin. This is due to the revolutionary blockchain technology. This is a database that keeps track of every transaction. There is no central point where you can find the information and it is not possible to spend the cryptocurrency multiple times. Hence, Bitcoin is one of the most trusted cryptocurrencies in the world, and hence Bitcoin is the future. Bitcoins cannot be double spent, and there can never be more than 21 million Bitcoins in circulation (expected to be around the year 2140), where there are now about 17 million.

4. The first Bitcoin transaction in real life was good for two pizzas

Bitcoin is an online currency and it is mainly used online. For a long time this was the case as companies struggled to integrate and accept the currency. Bitcoin used to not be worth that much at all. At the time, a user could order two large pizzas from the American chain Pappa John’s with 10,000 Bitcoins. If you were to do that today (spend 10,000 Bitcoins), you would pay more than 240 million euros for two pizzas. It is a remarkable transaction that is often cited on all kinds of websites that write about Bitcoin, but it is seen as the first real life purchase with Bitcoins.

5. Who is the founder of Bitcoin?

If you wonder who the founder of Bitcoin is, you will come across the name Satoshi Nakamoto. This name is known to everyone as the inventor of Bitcoin. However, no one knows who Nakamoto really is. No one knows his name, age or origin and it is therefore a great mystery. It could even be that this person does not exist at all, but that it is a fictitious person put forward by an interested organization. Some people claim that Nakamoto is American or British because he does not use Japanese characters in his encoding. Of course that would also be possible. It does become clear that Satoshi Nakamoto owns about 1 million Bitcoins and therefore has at least 20 billion euros in assets.

This article was created in collaboration with bitcoinguide.com