Monday, March 19, 2018 9:30AM / BitcoinPlay.Net Say, you have 10,000 bitcoins. What’s the best thing you can buy? Will you spend them on pizza, for instance? This is what a bloke did less than eight years ago. Back then, his 10,000 bitcoins were sufficient to get him a couple of pizzas. Imagine having that amount of coins in your Bitcoin poker account right now. With the current price of the cryptocurrency, you could clean up the whole casino easily! BTC rose from obscurity to mainstream recognition largely thanks to the insane surge in value it saw in 2017. Soon after, big-name brands started accepting it, Bitcoin gambling platforms became more popular, people began investing money in this cryptocurrency, and the general interest for Bitcoin reached an all-time high.
Then, somewhat unsurprisingly, the price went down, sparking yet another heated discussion about the volatile unpredictability of the bitcoin. Now, debates are all dandy if the participants know what they are talking about and the audience has at least some grasp of the matter. Neither of the above is true! Most experts are as clueless about the intricacies of the crypto markets as is the general audience.
The facts below will give you a much better understanding of the driving forces behind the world’s first cryptocurrency, how it came to be, who embraced it first, and how governments handle it. Read through it and you will be better equipped to talk about bitcoin than 90% of the pundits, who are spewing wild predictions left and right.
1. The mysterious legend SATOSHI NATAMOTO – a fictitious of the Bitcoin creator or creators. 2.
As of Jan 3rd of 2018 NATAMOTO owns $16.5billion in bitcoins 3. In 2015, Satoshi Natamoto was nominated for a NOBEL PRIZE IN ECONOMIC SCIENCES. 4. NO SINGLE ENTITY OR GOVERNEMENT has control over the bitcoin currency 5.
As of January 2018 around 16.7M BTC are in circulation. The maximum can be 21MILLION. 6.
About 1000 people own 40% of total BTC in circulation.
7. From March 2015 to Feb 2017 Bitcoin transaction fees are UP BY 1289% 8. 69% of banks participated in Infosys survey are experimenting with permission blockchains.
9. Bitcoin market cap is 253B by January 2018 10.
64% of bitcoin have never been used and might never be used. 11. Blockchain, a Bitcoin wallet raised $40M from Google ventures and Richard Branson 12. BLOCKCHIAN, BITSPRAY, COINSTREAM are three big bitcoin startups 13. FBI made $48M in 2013 by selling on auction once seized 144,000 bitcoins 14.
Blockchain LEDGER TECHNOLOGY when used by top10 investment banks could save $8-12B 15.
In 2015, in the USA only 802 citizens have filed taxes on Bitcoin income. 16. Mt.Gox in 2014 and Bithumb in July 2017 are two big bitcoin exchanges that have been hacked.
17. SatoshiDice – first big bitcoin acquisition with 126,315 BITCOINS IN 2013 18.
Nakowa won 11,000 BTC on a gambling site (net worth was $1.3M in 2013, as of Jan 2018 its $165 MILLION) 19. CHINESE MINING POOLS control approximately 81% of the bitcoin network’s collective hashrate. 20. Antpool – Chinese mining pool mined around 20% of all blocks between 2016-2017 21. BITCOIN PIZZA DAY – on May 22, 2010 two pizzas cost 10K bitcoins.
By January 3rd of 2018 their worth was up to 150.7 million. 22. As of January 2018, Bitcoin on GitHub has 24K Stargazers (bookmarks) and over 13.
8K Forks. 23.
Bitcoin transactions are measured in Satoshi/byte. 1 SATOSHI= 0.
1 BITCOIN 24. WALLET LOST = LOSING BITCOIN FOREVER! James, Howell lost 7,500 Bitcoins by throwing his hard drive which amounted to 4M EUROS 25. NUMBER of Bitcoin rewarded for mining halves EVERY 4 YEARS. After 64 Halvings, all 21M bitcoins will be in Circulations. 26. A new block of coins is “solved” EVERY 10 MINUTES. 27. ALL BITCOINS TRANSACTION DATA IS TRANSPARENT and can be seen on Blockchain 28.
SHA256 – A cryptographic hash function is used in bitcoin address creation.
29. 4000 th bitcoin was donated to WikiLeaks in Nov 2016. By Sep 2017 it reached to around 4024 BTC.
30. Bitcoin network is more powerful than 500 SUPERCOMPUTERS PUT TOGETHER 31. Refunds are not possible on bitcoin transactions. In 2016 a bitcoiner accidentally sent $137,000 instead of $5 with no way to retrieve it.
32. 17M bitcoins are expected to be in use in 10 Years 33. The 21M BITCOIN LIMIT is expected to be reached in 2140. 34. Austin Craig and Beccy Bingham’s famous, “Life on BITCOIN “depicted how they lived 90 DAYS ON JUST BITCOINS.
35. Alphabay phisher and Phishkingz made $1M IN 14months by STEALING BITCOINS. 36. University of NICOSIA, CYPRUS was the first university to accept tuition fees to be paid in BTC. 37. VIRGIN GALACTIC – a theoretical space travel adventure club accepts bitcoins. 38.
Big company that accept Bitcoin payments are OVERSTOCK, MICROSOFT, DISH NETWORK, EXPEDIA, DELL.
39. Bitcoin could be accepted in 300,000 stores in Japan in 2017 40. RIPPLE WITH 118.
8B AND ETHEREUM WITH 90.4B MARKET CAP are the other big cryptocurrencies following Bitcoin as of January 3rd 2018 41. 90% of all bitcoin addresses have less than 0.1 BTC.
42. Roger Ver with 520M, Charlie Shrem with 450M and Dave Carlson with 350M are few other bitcoin MILLIONAIRES. 43. One bitcoin transaction consumes 3,994 times more energy than a credit card transaction.
44. SINCE APRIL 1ST 2017, bitcoin is a legal payment method in Japan. 45. Bitcoin lost about 45% of its peak value at one point, between December 16 and December 22, 2017 46.
Japanese Yen accounts for more than 50% of Bitcoins trading market. 47.
In 2014, FPS, BELGIUM exempts bitcoin transactions from VAT. 48. In 2014, CBT, FINLAND exempts bitcoin from VAT and treats it as commodity.
49. Bitcoin has value added tax exemption in Belgium. 50.
Bitcoin is VAT free in Switzerland, Falcon, a Swiss private bank is the first bank to sell bitcoin to its clients. 51. In January 2018, Chiasso, Switzerland will accept taxes in bitcoin. 52.
Bitcoin is illegal in Saudi Arabia, Bolivia, Kyrgyzstan Ecuador, Morocco, Nepal, Algeria and Bangladesh. 53. In 2013, Thailand banned bitcoin, but in 2016 bank of Thailand suggested it is not illegal. 54. By January of 2018, there were 2,015 Bitcoin ATM’S worldwide in 61 countries. 55. Genesis coin with 36.01% and General bytes with 27.
64% of the market share are the biggest bitcoin ATM producers. 56. North America has over 80% of all Bitcoin ATMs. 57. Liberland- a micronation, accepts bitcoins as reserve currency. 58.
Started with 3k lines of code bitcoin core is now counting over 100k SLOC. 59.
Once all bitcoins have come to existence, transaction fees can drive miners. 60. Megaupload v2, launched by Kim Dotcom, allows micropayments to be made in bitcoin. 61. $100 invested in July 10, 2010 is now 18.
8M. 62. The market cap of Bitcoin is around $280B as of January 8, 2018. 63. Bitcoin leapt 127% in between October and November of 2017 64. A secret bitcoin millionaire behind the newly created “Pineapple Fund” has been giving away $86M to charity since Bitcoin peak in the end of 2017. 65.
One of the biggest names in Silicon Valley; Peter Thiels Founders Fund makes monster bet on bitcoin in January, 2018 worth hundreds of millions of dollars now. 66. In DECEMBER, 2017 the US government sold bitcoins seized during an opioid drug case that are now worth almost $10M 67. Kidnappers in Ukraine released a Bitcoin analyst after British company paid $1M in bitcoins as ransom, on December 30, 2017 Disclaimer “Proshare Nigeria Ltd hereby gives notice to the General Public that the content contained in this publication is as provided to it by the author and made without responsibility on its part. Any interested party in this content is advised to verify the veracity and authenticity of the statements contained therein. Proshare will not be liable for any misrepresentation contained therein and/or any damage that may arise therefrom.” .
