10 Surprising and Weird Facts About Bitcoin

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From the mystery surrounding Bitcoin’s creator, to hardcore fans’ love of meat, we delve into the outer reaches of the world’s most well-known cryptocurrency.

1. Bitcoin’s creator remains a mystery

Satoshi Nakamoto, the pseudonymous creator of Bitcoin, has never been identified.

It is not known if Satoshi is an individual or a group, but the fact remains they have yet to put their head(s) above the parapet.

2. Bitcoin is not the first cryptocurrency

We all think of Bitcoin as the daddy of cryptocurrency – the first of its kind in a brave new world, but this is wrong.

The first digital currency was actually DigiCash, created by David Chaum in 1989 – 20 years before Bitcoin arrived on the scene!

Chaum’s idea was to construct a system where transactions could be made in a way that was untraceable by Governments using cryptographic protocols.

Other digital currencies that came before Bitcoin are Wei Dai’s B-Money, Adam Back’s Hashcash and Nick Szabo’s theoretical Bit Gold.

3. Bitcoin’s ‘unbreakable’ keys

There’s a theory that Bitcoin private keys are so secure that they can’t be cracked by a brute-force attack until the computers involved are built from something other than matter and occupy something other than space.

If advances in quantum computing do make it feasible to crack an address, Bitcoin could potentially hard fork to a quantum resistant cryptography.

4. Satoshi’s Nobel Prize nomination

The enigmatic creator of Bitcoin, Satoshi Nakamoto, was nominated for the Nobel Prize in Economics in 2016.

He/she/they didn’t win.

5. A Satoshi is not the smallest unit of a Bitcoin

Many people wrongly assume that the smallest divisible of a Bitcoin is 1 Satoshi, ie 100 millionth of a Bitcoin, but this is wrong.

The Bitcoin code has already been altered to create even smaller denominations and it’s thought this function may be further needed if the value of Bitcoin continues to rise exponentially.

No new Bitcoins are being created so it’s not an inflationary practise, just the existing ones are being slicer into smaller portions.

On the Lightning Network – an additional transaction layer on top of the blockchain – what’s known as milli-satoshis are already in use. One millisatoshi (known as an ‘msat’) is worth one thousandth of a Satoshi.

6. Bitcoin is a currency and a commodity

Bitcoin is both a currency and a commodity.

It is a digital currency that can be used to buy products and services, yet certain Government agencies around the world classify it as a commodity.

7. Satellites protect the Bitcoin network

Bitcoin’s blockchain is beamed to the entire world via a network of satellites, known as the Blockstream Satellite Project.

This neutralizes the threat of a global internet outage or attack on the transmission of Bitcoin data over the internet from taking down the network.

8. The Million Clubs

Those who own 1 Bitcoin or more are said to be in the ‘21 Million Club’ as there will only ever be just shy of this number of Bitcoins in existence.

Anyone who owns 21 Bitcoins are said to be part of the ‘One in A Million Club’.

Interestingly, only 10% of people who hold Bitcoin have more than 0.1 Bitcoin in their wallet.

Only around 1,600 wallets hold more than 1,000 Bitcoins, and around 100 wallets have more than 10,000 Bitcoins in them.

9. Most Bitcoins aren’t used for crime

Only about 10% of Bitcoin transactions are connected to crime, despite the public’s perception that this is what the digital currency is mainly used for.

10. Bitcoiners love meat

Being an avid carnivore has become a fad in the hardcore Bitcoin community.

Certain prominent Bitcoiners hold ‘meatup’ dinners each year which focuses on different meats as the centrepiece of the meal.