10 Surprising Bitcoin Facts

Bitcoin has been growing in popularity amongst many investors but its origins started more than 10 years ago. As with anything in life, it’s had many ups and downs which have produced some truly surprising, obscure and interesting outcomes.

In this short post, we’re going to walk you through some of the best and most unbelievable bitcoin facts we’ve found.

1. Bitcoin’s mystery creator

Now this one is more widely known but a great fact to start with, especially for anyone new to the world of cryptocurrency. Bitcoin was created in the wake of the last great financial crisis of 2008 by an anonymous person, or group of people, known under the pseudonym, Satoshi Nakamoto.

Some even believe that the coin was created by four companies – Samsung, Toshiba, Nakamichi, Motorola – in collaboration. Could it be true?

2. Imagine the delivery cost..

In May 2010, a programmer purchased two large Papa John's pizzas for 10,000 bitcoins, worth about $30 at the time. It is believed to be the very first purchase of any product with bitcoin, and at today’s bitcoin price, those pizzas would be worth over $735 million AUD.

3. The half-life of a block

When bitcoin was first mined in 2009, mining one block would earn you 50 BTC. In 2012, this was halved to 25 BTC. By 2016, this was halved again to 12.5 BTC. On May 11, 2020, the reward halved again to 6.25 BTC.

4. One man's trash

James Howell, an Englishman from Newport, United Kingdom, claims he accidentally threw out his computer hard-drive containing roughly 7,500 BTC after being one of the cryptocurrency’s earliest miners. With an estimated value today of 5.5 million AUD, he has been desperately searching the local landfill to find the lost hard-drive since 2013. Talk about bad luck!

5. All for one, $200 for all

Bitcoin has a maximum market cap of 21 million coins. So, if all coins were distributed to the population equally, each person would receive around ~0.0027 BTC. That’s roughly $200 AUD.

6. Biggest BTC movement to date

The largest amount of bitcoin ever moved in a single transaction was 500,000 bitcoin, and the highest value ever transferred on-chain was 1 billion USD for the paltry fee of $700!

7. First Bitcoin ATM

Vancouver, Canada was the first city in the world to have a bitcoin cash machine.

8. FOMO, to the nth degree

Former Bitcoin developer, Martti Malmi, mined 55,000 BTC on his laptop in 2009 and 2010 before selling them all before 2012. That amount of bitcoin would have been valued at approximately $4 billion AUD today. Luckily, there have been many successful bitcoin millionaire stories.

9. That's a lot of trillions

Since the inception of the Bitcoin Network in 2009, nearly $10 trillion USD has been settled on-chain using Bitcoin (BTC) - with more than $7.5 trillion in payments being settled just from 2018 onwards! None of these transfers required a bank.

10. What a welcomed surprise!

A crypto user who earned 127 BTC by completing surveys back in 2011 as a kid recently stumbled across his old computer and private keys. Upon regaining access to his bitcoin wallet and finding their sleeping fortune, the user sold their entire crypto holdings for just over $4.2 million USD.

Time and time again, bitcoin has proved itself as a legitimate and effective digital currency by weathering many storms in its short history and coming to create its own legacy. Although less than 2% of the population own bitcoin today, the future seems very bright for this digital currency.

If you’re interested in making your first purchase, take a look at the bitcoin price and chart page to see how it’s tracking and start your digital currency investment journey.