6 Interesting Facts About Bitcoin

Bitcoin is something you might have become more familiar with recently, as more people have started to invest in and profit from the cryptocurrency. In order to become more familiar with Bitcoin, here are six interesting facts that you have probably never heard of.

1. The nature of Bitcoin

Bitcoin only exists electronically. It is nothing like the physical coins most of us are familiar with, made of gold or silver. Instead, it is only available to you digitally as cryptocurrency. Bitcoins are mined on a network called Blockchain and are products of successfully mined blocks of Bitcoin.

2. Decentralized currency

Even though there are no financial institutions keeping track of or able to access your Bitcoin, all transactions using Bitcoin are recorded on Blockchain. Blockchain holds over 107 gigabytes of transaction data as of 2016.

3. The first bitcoin transaction paid for pizza

On May 22, 2010, the most expensive Papa John’s pizzas of all time were purchased by one Laszlo Hanyecz. Laszlo spent 10,000 Bitcoins (worth $41 at the time) on two pizzas. This ended up being the very first payment made with digital currency. At the moment, 10,000 Bitcoins are worth quite a bit more than $41 dollars, however.

If Laszlo Hanyecz would have satiated his hunger with something in his fridge instead, and saved his cryptocurrency for a rainy day such as today, he would have been able to exchange it for 25.8 million dollars.

4. There is a finite amount of Bitcoins

Just because Bitcoins are profitable and have been growing in value, this does not mean that Bitcoins themselves have been growing. The largest amount of Bitcoins that will ever exist is 21 million. As of right now, there are only 16.3 of those 21 million that have been mined and may now be used in order to execute transactions such as trading, exchanging, and completing purchases. The last Bitcoin in existence will not be mined until the year 2140. This is the last time that Bitcoins will ever be mined.

5. You can buy virtually anything with Bitcoin

Even though it has not always been this way, as of fairly recently, consumers are able to dip into their Bitcoin funds in order to make a number of purchases, both online and offline. There are now quite a few businesses that allow Bitcoin as a form of payment, but hopefully one day all establishments will accept both fiat and digital currencies.

Overstock, a website much like Amazon, sells a wide array of products and accepts Bitcoin payment. Virgin Galactic accepts this cryptocurrency for the payment of space travel. You may book a flight with BTC. Many restaurants will also accept Bitcoin. You can do anything from purchase a Tesla to buying a coffee from Starbucks with Bitcoin. Believe it or not, you can even pay for a college degree.

6. Almost every year since 2010 has been a profitable year for Bitcoin

It is 2017 and everyone who uses the internet is aware of the fact that Bitcoin is profitable. What we are less aware of is just how profitable the cryptocurrency actually is. Apparently, for the past 7 years, Bitcoin has always ended on a positive note by substantially increasing its value from the beginning to the end of each year.

Bitcoin has also generally increased its profits from one year to the next. This is with the exception of 2015, which saw Bitcoin’s profits decreasing by 30 percent from the profits found in 2013. However, this bump in the road was quickly forgotten when 2016 gained double the profits of 2015, and 2017 grew to be 171% higher than 2016 profits.