With its rich history and promising future, Bitcoin never ceases to amaze. From its humble beginnings to the colossus it’s become, there have always been plenty of events, situations and facts that make the oldest and largest cryptocurrency such an interesting phenomenon. Read on to find out about our selection of 8 facts that we find particularly interesting. How many of them do you know?
#1 Bitcoin network is faster than supercomputers
The world's fastest supercomputer, the Summit, works at 122.3 petaflops, a quadrillion floating-point operations per second. If you look at the entire Bitcoin network, the processing power is about 80,704,290 petaflops. But a supercomputer can do several different things, while the only thing the Bitcoin network does is add blocks to the blockchain. And we think that’s quite important.
#2 The FBI owns one of the largest Bitcoin wallets
Many years ago, the FBI shut down the Silk Road, a big black market website where Bitcoin was frequently used to make purchases. FBI acquired all the Bitcoins circulating on the website, around 1.5% of all the world's Bitcoin. This makes the FBI one of the wealthiest entities in Bitcoin if only they could use and trade that.
#3 Liberland is a micronation that has Bitcoin as an official currency
In April 2015, a micronation between Croatia and Serbia known as Liberland was born. It was founded by Vít Jedlička, a politician, publicist, activist and president of Liberland. The official currency of Liberland is Bitcoin. The government believes that Bitcoin and its underlying blockchain concepts provide a secure and transparent method for recording electronic, financial, and physical assets.
#4 The first commercial Bitcoin transaction was for pizza
This one you’ve probably heard of, but it’s worth mentioning anyway. Did you know why we celebrate May 22 as Bitcoin Pizza Day? In the early days of Bitcoin, one coin was literally worth pennies. So, on May 22, 2010, a man in Florida paid 10,000 BTC for two pizzas (back then, this was about $40). This is generally recognized as the first commercial Bitcoin transaction.
#5 Man wants to shovel a landfill to get back his BTC wallet
In 2013, James Howells, who lives in Wales, threw out a hard drive with 7,500 BTC. When he realized how much the value of Bitcoin had shot up in recent years, he went looking for the drive. Now, he's trying to get his local city council to allow him to excavate the landfill in an attempt to find the drive. He's claiming to offer a portion of the proceeds if the city enables him to look through the trash. If James strikes gold (or Bitcoin, to be precise), he’ll be over 300 million USD richer. We’re free this weekend to offer some help, James.
#8 You might not be able to live to see the last Bitcoin
Bitcoin is designed to have a limited supply at 21 million BTC. As of December 2021, almost 19 million Bitcoin is in circulation, which is 90% of the total supply. The last Bitcoin is estimated to be mined in 2140, or over a hundred years from now. So if you are reading this, you are probably going to have to break some Guinness age records to see the last Bitcoin mined.
#7 People used to give away their own Bitcoin
Back in the day, when the price of Bitcoin was negligible, there were some who wanted to spread its use by simply giving some of their own Bitcoin away. In 2010, Gavin Andersen, one of the original developers of Bitcoin made a website called “The Bitcoin Faucet” where everyone could claim 5 BTC per visit. Yes, that’s right, Gavin gave away as much as 200,000 USD (in today’s money) to every visitor of the Bitcoin Faucet. Knowing that, we’re putting some money aside to invest into time travel. You can find a regularly updated list of active Bitcoin and other crypto faucets at cryptofaucets.cash.
#8 You can earn free Bitcoin by playing games
ZEBEDEE is a platform that lets you earn crypto for free by playing games. Some fantastic companies (for example, Bitstamp) recognized how exciting Bitcoin gaming is. They provided us with some Bitcoin, which you can get by playing games and using our ZBD app with an integrated Lightning wallet.
With ZBD mobile games, you’ll start stacking Bitcoin without any investment. If you’re a more skilled gamer, you can tackle the challenges on the battlefield in CS:GO. Devote your free time to having fun and earning real money, instead of wasting it on boredom. Just make sure to join our Discord chat to get the memo.
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