If only there was a way to fill our heads with knowledge on cryptocurrency without overwhelming ourselves.
You're in luck. We’ve assembled 100 of the most interesting cryptocurrency factoids of all time.
Take a break and read ‘em all. It may seem like you’re wasting time, but you’re actually making yourself smart investor.
1
Cryptocurrencies were debated since the 80’s
Cryptocurrencies were debated since the 80’s in “cypherpunk” forums. Even though the concept was not new, the development of a decentralized technology able to sustain its own safety and thus allow cryptocurrencies to come to life was impossible because of an unsolved problem called “the double spending problem”. Satoshi Nakamoto, the person or group which invented the blockchain, solved the problem after several others attempted to do so. Most of the people working to find this solution are scientists linked to the cypherpunk scene, a group that advocates widespread use of cryptography to achieve total privacy for personal data. This is what made the existence of decentralized cryptocurrencies possible. He published a paper called "Bitcoin: A Peer-to-Peer Electronic Cash System" in 2008 describing his invention.
2
Satoshi remains anonymous to date
People “accused” of being him include early supporters of the project, an Australian journalist who presumably created a complex hoax system fabricating evidence suggesting that he was Nakamoto and an American man named Satoshi Nakamoto, who, when questioned by journalists, said “I am no longer involved in that and I cannot discuss it”. He later explained that he was thinking about his work in other projects and that he didn’t even know about Bitcoin.
3
In his “bio”, Satoshi described himself as a 37-year old Japanese man
However, there’s evidence indicating that the person or group is located in the United Kingdom, mainly because of the spelling and terminology used in his comments and an activity time consistent with the British timezone.
4
There are no "wallets"
Cryptocurrencies are not "stored" anywhere. What people call wallets are their public and private keys, alphanumeric combinations able to encrypt and decrypt information which, in the blockchain, will result in transactions, but this is usually done by software which use these keys to make transactions easily.
5
Cryptocurrencies are not comparable to digital coins
Image from Crypto Head
You can check your bank account balance, even your balance for digital coins, like aerial miles (which will show a number based on really how much of that you have). With blockchain, there is only a log of transactions, which, when analyzed, can determine how much a wallet can spend, but the information of “how many coins one has” simply doesn’t exist anywhere in the blockchain.
6
Cryptocurrencies which are not bitcoin are usually called altcoins
Bitcoin holds roughly half of the total cryptocurrency market share in capitalization.
7
Ripple (XRP) and Ethereum (ETH) are the most valuable altcoins
Ripple (XRP) and Ethereum (ETH) are the most valuable altcoins in terms of market capitalization. Ripple was once more valuable than Ethereum but dropped to the third position and have been there for more than a year.
8
There are several protocols commonly used to warrant the security of a blockchain
Bitcoin uses proof-of-work, while Ripple uses proof-of-stake. These protocols rely on a margin of “fault tolerance” to achieve consensus and ensure every transaction is legitimate.
9
Bitcoin utilizes proof-of-work for consensus
The concept was introduced by Cynthia Dwork and Moni Naor in 1993. Each block in Bitcoin has a “hashcash puzzle” on it, which needs to be solved to be added to the blockchain. These are very hard mathematical problems, currently solvable only by machines built specifically for it.
10
People who solve hashcash puzzles in exchange for a reward are called miners
Proof of work achieves consensus this way: in case there are two or more conflicting blocks attempting to get included in the blockchain, the one with the most computational power dedicated to it is considered the “valid one”, and will be the one added to the chain. This way, people exchange their CPU and electricity for a prize, safeguarding the blockchain`s security, and, as long as more than 50% of the miners’ power is dedicated to the valid block, the system will be secure. It’s almost impossible to include a malicious block in major cryptocurrencies. There are so many miners dedicating their power to the “real block” so they get its reward that one would need an infeasible amount of computational power to beat 50% of the total power. Miners are inclined to solve the “most probable valid” block because mining one which ends up not added to the chain won’t give them any reward.
11
Proof-of-stake is a popular protocol used to reach consensus
In this case, people “stake” some of their coins over a block. In case of conflicting blocks, the one with the biggest pool of coins staked on it is considered the “valid one” and is the one which will be added to the blockchain.
12
The blockchain is “hosted” by all of its nodes
In the case of Bitcoin, anyone with the Bitcoin core installed, instead of a central server. When someone wants to make a transaction and therefore include a new block, each node has to verify the hash and timestamp included on it before inserting it on the blockchain. As there are thousands of active nodes and all active ones have to verify the validity of each block, this causes some transactions to become very slow. In most cases, anyone can be a node of a cryptocurrency, and the number of nodes determines how much a cryptocurrency is really trustworthy (as there are more people to verify each transaction)
13
Ripple only accept selected nodes, so it is less transparent but faster
As opposed to Bitcoin, Ripple has a “Unique Node List”, which is a closed list of nodes able to host and verify the Ripple chain of blocks. This makes their transactions almost instantaneous. Ripple’s authorized nodes include Microsoft and MIT’s data center.
14
Many blockchain platforms are called “cryptocurrencies”
Some so-called cryptocurrencies are actually whole platforms or operating systems for executing smart contracts. The most famous of them is Ethereum, which provides a virtual machine that can run scripts through its nodes, allowing the creation of decentralized applications (dApps) for several use cases. Every blockchain platform, though, has a native token.
15
Bitcoin team is loyal to Satoshi’s ideals
Some blockchains are regularly updated, but the Bitcoin team is very conservative about it. In 2017, Bitcoin activated SegWit, an update which made transactions faster. Although many more could be done, as it bas been already done for several other cryptocurrencies, the Bitcoin team is very conservative to changes in the protocol because they are committed to “being loyal to Satoshi’s ideals”. The draconian attitude toward their community’s demands led to the creation of the Bitcoin Cash (BCH), which quickly ascended to the 4th position in market cap among the cryptocurrencies.
16
Bitcoin is still quite slow
Depending on the load on Bitcoin’s network and the transaction fee, some transactions take an exorbitant amount of time before confirmation. In some extreme cases, there were periods when the median transaction confirmation time was two days, but most of the time it doesn’t exceed 60 minutes.
17
Each transaction needs a fee
When making a transaction, the person sending the funds has to include a transaction fee for the miner responsible to authenticate it. This is done by simply including in the software wallet how much you want to pay for a miner. If a bigger fee is included, the transaction is usually proportionally faster, as more miners are interested in authenticating it.
18
Bitcoin increased 5,992% in value in 2013
In 2017, when its popularity outside the cryptocurrency community started growing, it increased 1840%, reaching $17,900. In February 2018 it dropped to $6,200, a 50% decrease in 16 days.
19
Exchanges are places to buy and sell cryptocurrencies
An exchange is a website where people place cryptocurrencies buy and sell orders. Some of them accept fiat money, like credit cards, while most of them only facilitate inter-cryptocurrency trading.
20
The largest bitcoin exchange lost 850,000 BTC to hackers
In 2014, an exchange called Mt. Gox., the largest in the world, responsible for 70% of all bitcoin transactions, announced that approximately 850,000 bitcoins belonging to customers and the company were missing and probably stolen, representing more than $450 million at the time. Of these, 200,000 has since been “found”.
21
In September 2017, South Korea banned all ICOs held in the country
Before the law passed, the country’s ICOs were raising millions in seconds, like SingularityNet, which raised USD$36 million in 60 seconds and Telegram, which had the most successful ICO to date, raising USD$1.7 billion.
22
Initial Coin Offerings (ICO) raise funds for cryptocurrency
They usually consist of a pre-sale, for selected investors only, with lower prices for the coins, and a public sale. Investors buy the initial coins using either some other kind of cryptocurrency or with fiat money.
23
The proof-of-work authentication (mining) is performed by specialized machines
They’re called Asics and are built for the sole function of mining cryptocurrencies. The puzzles become as hard to solve as there is CPU power trying to solve them. In Bitcoin’s early years, it was possible to mine using a normal PC, but with time these puzzles have become so difficult that it would take some years to solve a block, even with a very powerful computer. This feature regulates inflation in mining and makes the system more trustworthy.
24
The proof-of-work authentication (mining) is performed by specialized machines
Of the top 10 cryptocurrencies in market cap, the only one headed by a woman (Joyce Kim) is Stellar (XLM). Stellar is a system focused on cross-border payments, similar to Ripple.
25
The blockchain has many use cases
The blockchain is used by a wide range of companies within a wide range of use cases. To name a few: Facebook uses it for identity verification, JPMorgan & Chase enjoy the facilities blockchain provide for a financial remittance and Toyota is using blockchain on self-driving cars.
26
Cryptocurrency is provably secure
However, one can get easily scammed because of particular security personal actions. Scamming schemes often involve mailing a website identical to your exchange's or asking for your private key for any reason. Private keys should never be typed anywhere. If you have a wallet software, it probably has your private key stored already and won't ever share or ask for it.
27
Estonia’s health care system relies on blockchain
Estonia’s entire public health care system relies on blockchain since 2016. It’s used, mainly, for identity verification and data security, ensuring a universal and technologically efficient health care system for the whole nation, where the same digital ID is used to track patient’s records and interact with different professionals and facilities at the same time.
28
The purpose of public-key cryptography
Cryptocurrencies use public-key cryptography. Users need their private keys to transfer funds and “sign” a message which, when attached to the receiver’s public key is broadcasted to the network signaling a transaction between the parties.
29
Every transaction is publicly available
The blockchain contains a series of blocks with every transaction made on it, and every node has a copy of it and can check them whenever desired. That’s why it’s usually called “pseudo-anonymous”, because, even though it’s impossible to trace a transaction to some specific person, any node can check that it existed.
30
Cryptography replaced trust
Cryptocurrencies eliminate the need of a “trusted middleman” to verify the validity of their transactions, replacing “ trust” with “cryptography” and making transactions peer-to-peer. A private key uses an SHA-256 hash, meaning it is 64 characters long and has 256 bits, and that there are 2256 possibilities of combinations. If we took the entire CPU capability of the world and dedicate it entirely to “hack” a key through brute force, it would take roughly 300 million years to do it (approximately the age of the universe). That’s why we can rest assured that, assuming we don`t fall in a scam and hand over our private key to anyone, your wallet will never be stolen and our balance will always be there.
31
The smallest Bitcoin unit is 0.00000001 BTC
Cryptocurrencies also have names for their units. The smallest Bitcoin unit is called Satoshi or SAT, and it’s equivalent to 0.00000001 BTC. Equivalently, the base unit for Ethereum is called WEI.
32
Payer sends his whole balance
Buying with Bitcoin follows a logic very different from the usual. When a transaction is made, what happens “internally” is that the payer sends his whole balance (his last block), not just the amount he wants to pay, to the chain and then receive a block back with his “change”, which will be his new last block.
33
Two really expensive pizzas
The earliest known Bitcoin purchases happened in May 2010, when someone bought two pizzas for 10.000 BTC. Sounds like a really good deal, considering this amount of BTC is worth around $66,000,000 in October 2018.
34
How wallets work
To send funds, you need your private key to sign the transaction. When you create a wallet, what it means is that you created two alphanumeric symbols called “public” and “private” keys. There are numerous ways to make transactions without typing your private key, which are applications developed to store it and facilitate sending and receiving funds.
35
Software wallets will work only on the device they were first installed
As a security measure, software wallets are programmed to work only on the device they were installed, and, instead of asking for your key, they ask you to set a password. As losing this device would mean losing all your funds, it’s advisable that, when you generate your keys, that you either write them by hand or print them and keep them in a safe place.
36
Hardware wallets are the safest
There are also devices specialized in signing cryptocurrency transactions, usually called “hardware wallets”. These are the safest and practical way one can use to make cryptocurrency payments, and they come with a “seed”, a paper with a series of words which can be used to recover your wallet in another device or software in case you lose your hardware wallet or reset it.
37
The richest people in cryptocurrency
In February 2018, Forbes launched their first-ever list of the top 100 cryptocurrency riches.
38
Ripple has a controversial history
The first name on the list is the co-founder of CEO, Chris Larsen. Chris co-founded Ripple, which at the time was called Open Labs, with the prestigious cryptographer Jed McCaleb. After some time, they started having frequent misunderstandings about the course Ripple was heading. McCaleb had a relationship with Joyce Kim who also shared the same animosity toward Larsen.
39
Stellar is born
McCaleb eventually demanded that Larsen should be removed as CEO. The board and investors organized a voting, and everyone voted in favor of Larsen, except McCaleb. After the unfavorable outcome, McCaleb himself quit from Ripple and founded the platform Stellar with Joyce Kim.
40
Fork
A fork is when one chain of blocks split in two and both are considerate legitimate. Examples of forks are Stellar, which surged from Ripple, Bitcoin Gold is a fork from Bitcoin, Ethereum Classic is a recent fork from Ethereum.
41
Quantum computing: a possible threat
Quantum computing, a kind of computation based on quantum mechanics infinitely more powerful than we are used to, is a technology developing much faster than what was expected, especially when Google announced they developed a 72 qubits quantum computer. Quantum computers are the only kind of CPUs which could theoretically break a cryptocurrency key (and virtually any cryptography reliant system, like literally any bank account password), depending on how much qubits their processors have, which is much more than Google could achieve. Some cryptocurrencies are already “quantum resistant” like the Quantum Resistant Ledger. If some real and powerful quantum computer is developed, every wallet and every SHA-256 protected password would be in danger, including Bitcoin.
42
The whales
People or groups which manipulate the cryptos market at their favor using pump and dump techniques are usually called “whales”. They own large volumes of coins and, to cause an artificial low in the target currency’s price, the whales repeatedly place large sell orders at a price much lower than the current. Other investors, seeing how the currency value is dropping, get apprehensive and start selling their coins too, making the coin`s value drop even more. The whale will then buy the coins back at the new low and repeat the process. Of course, for that to work, the person needs to possess a huge volume of funds that will “move the market”, and that is usually done on smaller cryptocurrencies with less liquidity, otherwise, he is just selling his coins for an unprofitable price without getting anything back.
43
Bearwhale: an icon in the cryptocurrencies history
“BearWhale” is the name the community gave to a person which, on October 6th, 2014 placed a sell order in an exchange of 30.000 BTC for $300 per coin. The price, at the time, was $350, so there it caused generalized tension about how this large sell order could move its price down to 2010’s value. Surprisingly, his coins were all bought really quickly and he was only able to shake the Bitcoin price curve for 6 hours, as the price returned to normal after that.
44
The revelation
Later, BearWhale revealed himself through a post on Reddit and claimed that he had done that as a protest for increasing the block size limit, an unmet demand many users share.
45
Best and Worst performers
The best performing cryptocurrencies in the first semester of 2018 were Paccoin, with 1,481.33%, Hexx, with 1,268.96%, Mithril, with 922.55%, Casinocoin, with 139.63% and Ontology, which grew 109.14% from January to July. On the other side, the worst performers were Bittconnect, losing 99.88% of its value, Rise, which lost 97.01%, Mybit Token, 99.59% negative, OP Coin, with a 98.23% loss and Bitcoin Gold, which lost 89.38% of its value from January to July.
46
The largest cryptocurrency exchange is constantly moving
The largest cryptocurrency exchange is constantly moving from countries as they adopt legislation that makes their business illegal. Binance, the largest cryptocurrencies exchange in volume traded, were located in China. In 2018, the country blocks foreign trading platforms to operate there, so they briefly moved to Japan, where they also faced legal problems. After leaving Japan, the exchange was received with arms wide open by the government of Malta, which even tweeted welcoming them.
47
Bitcoin is legal and regulated in Japan
In Japan, paying with Bitcoin is legal and regulated by the government since 2014. The Payment Services Act defines “cryptocurrency” as a property value, not currencies, and are subject to taxes. Exchanges and other kinds of cryptocurrency related businesses, though, are subjected to a very strict regulation.
48
Some tokens are securities in USA
Any ICO token is a security and is under the regulation of the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC). In April 2018, an ICO backed by Floyd Mayweather and other celebrities have been prosecuted by the SEC for fraud.
49
The EU has cut out the “transparency” part of blockchain
The European Union requires exchanges and wallets to apply customer due diligence controls, including verifying customers, to any business dealing with cryptocurrencies.
50
Gibraltar, a British Overseas Territory, is one of the most important venues for ICOs and blockchain startups
Their Distributed Ledger Technology Regulatory Framework, a law introduced in 2018, proactively supports blockchain innovation, while the island’s minister of commerce said in an interview that they are seeking quality blockchain related firms to settle there.
51
The 20th most valuable cryptocurrency was born as a meme
Dogecoin, which describes itself on its website as “favored by Shiba Inus worldwide” has $645.253.303 USD accumulated in market cap, and around 10mi USD are transacted in DOGE every day.
52
Almost every bank uses SWIFT for cross-border payments, but they could be already using Ripple
SWIFT is a cumbersome, expensive, slow and old.protocol used to assure the validity of financial transactions between different institutions because they use different systems and generally don’t trust each other. Ripple was invented to serve the same purpose as SWIFT. It uses its cryptocurrency (XRP) as a middle currency for instantaneous transfers to any bank, in any currency for free. Many major banks use Ripple internally and some of them already implemented it user-side.
53
Blockchain is being used to control Electrical Power Grids
The technology allows users and companies to both buy or sell renewable energy to other participants of the grid. Two examples are the Brooklyn Microgrid, in New York and the Enexa, in South Australia. As they’re not dependent on a central server, they ’re also transparent and less prone to failures.
54
New bitcoins are created when miners receive rewards
For every 210,00 blocks created (this takes approximately four years) the reward value is halved. Eventually, the cap of 21 million bitcoins will be reached and the reward will decrease to zero so no new coins are going to be created, a limit set by Sakamoto when he implemented the protocol. Miners, then, will receive the transaction fees included in the transactions by the payer, but not rewards.
55
Blockchain provides a perfect framework for supply chain management
It is transparent and secure and allow multiple parties involved in a process to access and include only valid information in a database built over a dApp containing data about movements or transferring of ownership for an item in production. This is already being used by Renault and by the wine industry in Italy and China.
56
Every transaction is recorded in an immutable block
It’s impossible to remove or modify a block after it’s been added to the blockchain. Altering past blocks would have an effect in the whole system.
57
Your wallet can be blacklisted
Vendors and exchanges may not accept your coins if your last block is “contaminated” with certain transactions, usually involving terrorism or illegal activity, even if you didn’t know the person you were trading with had a blacklisted wallet before. Monero is an altcoin created to avert this issue. Their blockchain, in contrast to most others, is completely anonymous, making it impossible to check addresses’ activities. Monero is the most widely accepted cryptocurrency in “deep web” stores.
58
Some blockchain nodes are stored in the Space (like, literally, in satellites)
The largest organization doing this is the Singaporean cryptocurrency Qtum, having 72 nodes located in satellites. Qtum is also quantum-resistant, meaning it couldn’t be hacked by quantum computers.
59
Ethereum is changing its consensus algorithm to proof-of-stake
In 2017, Vitalik Buterin, co-founder of the Ethereum platform, announced they were planning to implement the “Casper Project”, which would gradually change the platform’s consensus algorithm to proof of stake. Since the first release of the project was implemented, in May 2018, all new users creating a wallet were potential validators, instead of miners. The main arguments for the change are that this special protocol would make the system safer and the enormous amount of electricity required for proof-of-work.
60
Blockchain was firstly idealized in 1991
The term “blockchain”, meaning a ledger of blocks containing cryptography hash and timestamps was first introduced by W. Scott Stornetta.in 1991. Proof-of-work was invented by Cynthia Dwork in 1993. Satoshi used those core concepts, along with others, to introduce Bitcoin in 2008.
61
Bitcoin’s consensus algorithm, proof-of-work, consumes 29.05TWh of energy annually
This is approximately all of Africa's electricity consumption each year. Proof-of-stake, in comparison, doesn’t require any CPU power for validation and thus much less electrical energy consumption in comparison to POW.
62
Blockchain is being extremely useful for Internet of Things (IoT) appliances
It reduces costs, builds trust and accelerates transactions. It’s estimated that, by 2019, 20% of all IoT deployments will have some kind of blockchain services implemented. Some applications which use blockchain for IoT include IDM Adept, Azure blockchain as a service and Airlock.
63
The first block of a blockchain is called the “genesis block”
It’s the only one which doesn’t contain references from previous blocks.
64
Bitcoin’s genesis block has a mysterious message on its code
Bitcoin’s genesis block included the message “The Times 03/Jan/2009 Chancellor on brink of second bailout for banks”, which suggests it was employed this day. It’s also a hint about Satoshi’s identity and political views. It may also be a critic on the instability caused by fractional-reserve banking, a problem which can be seen as one of the motives for Satoshi’s invention.
65
A man once lost his wallet worth $75 million
In 2017, a man from Newport, Wales, threw away his drive containing a file with his keys (his “wallet”). He lost $75 million of irrecoverable dollars because of it. He acquired his BTCs by mining using a normal PC since 2009. He planned to dig up and search the landfill his HD probably ended at but wasn’t allowed by the city officials.
66
There are mining pools
As Bitcoin’s and Ethereum ’s mining difficulty became strikingly difficult, some people started turning to “mining pools”, groups where people buy shares of very potent data centers which try to solve the hashcash puzzles, then the members receive a part of the reward based on how many shares they had. It makes the income from mining more consistent, as they receive smaller portions of rewards on a consistent basis instead of using their own machinery to receive a full reward once every few years.
67
More than 800 cryptocurrencies “died”
Mostly because of Bitcoin’s 2018 crash, which made people much more cautious about investing in unpredictable currencies, their value lowered so much that it eventually reached zero.
68
Celebrity endorsement
Ashton Kutcher is a big Bitcoin enthusiast, having said that blockchain is a revolution in a conference already in 2013. Another Hollywood actor, Keanu Reeves, said that cryptocurrencies will “free citizens of the world from global and economic slavery. Mike Tyson released a custom Bitcoin wallet stylized with his tattoo and announced he would implement Bitcoin withdrawal in his ATM brand.
69
Buy music
Mel B, ex-spice girl, was the first known artist to accept Bitcoin for her single. Snoop Dogg also tweeted he “wanted to make his next album available Bitcoin and to be delivered in a Drone”. Although the tweet was mostly presumed to be a joke, he started exchanging tweets with Coinbase (a cryptocurrency exchange) which ended with him tweeting “dm your info, I want to make it happen”.
70
In Switzerland, an evangelical church accepts donations in cryptocurrencies
Offers can be made with Bitcoin (BTC), Bitcoin Cash (BCH), Ether (ETH), Ripple (XRP) and Stellar Lumen (XLM).
71
Some global specialists are persecuting cryptocurrencies
Yves Mesrch, a member of the European Central Bank’s executive board called for a global crackdown on cryptocurrencies because, according to him, it’s a “threat for financial stability” and attacked Bitcoin transaction speed. Agustín Carstens, head of the Bank for International Settlements has described bitcoin as “a bubble, a Ponzi scheme, and an environmental disaster” and also called for governmental restrictions on them. Jamie Dimon, chairman and CEO of JPMorgan Chase said that Bitcoin is a fraud and that he would “fire in a second” anyone at the bank found to be trading with bitcoins. Warren Buffett said he would never invest in cryptocurrencies and that they are almost certainly heading to a bad end.
72
Mining is giving some dignity to some Venezuelans, but the Government is not happy with it
In Venezuela, a country afflicted by a severe economic and political crisis, there are whole underground facilities for Bitcoin mining that, although not equipped with high-end computers, provide rewards which, converted to Venezuela’s currency, result in a substantial amount of money. Even though there’s no laws prohibiting mining in the country, miners constantly face arrest and police raids dedicated to finding people and equipment involved in mining are frequent.
73
Nicolas Maduro launched an official Venezuelan cryptocurrency
The coin called Petro is backed by the country's oil and mineral reserves.
74
There are more than 2000 different cryptocurrencies
Their summed market cap is approximately $200.993.440.500.
75
Mining is more profitable in places where electricity prices are low
Mining consumes electricity, so countries charging lower costs for it tend to concentrate the majority of the mining pools. Most of Bitcoin mining takes place in China, where there’s a hydroelectric energy surplus. Switzerland, a country which also practices low prices for its hydroelectric energy, is also a mining hub: they even have a region baptized as the “Crypto Valley”.
76
Manufacturing mining machines is a very profitable business
Some tech companies, like NVidia and AMD, are directing a large portion of their operations to develop GPUs dedicated to mining (ASICs).
77
Facebook, Twitter and Google ban ads related to cryptocurrencies
They argue that this is a decision aiming to prevent the promotion of “financial products and services frequently associated with misleading or deceptive promotional practices”.
78
Eliminates bureaucracy
Blockchain is being used for digital identity verification and thus eliminating a lot of bureaucracy. In China, a platform called “thekey” eliminated the requirement the elderly had of traveling long distances to central regions and waiting in long lines to receive their pensions, replacing the bureaucracy with a dApp capable of verifying identity with facial recognition. Also in China, a booming number of cities already fully adopted this blockchain’s potentiality in healthcare. Honda’s Civic Secure Identity Platform also uses blockchain for identity verification, while IBM offers a service named IBM Blockchain Trusted Identity for a wide range of businesses.
79
Bitcoin is regulated and widely accepted in all types of stores in Japan
They also have a bunch of ATMs which work with Bitcoin spread through the country.
80
Tether is a coin backed by the United States Dollar
It’s usually used for buying cryptos in exchanges which don’t accept fiat money, allowing traders to buy them with a what is called a “stablecoin” (as its value in USD never changes). Tether also has the important function of establishing realistic cryptocurrencies prices in USD. Since most of the biggest exchanges don’t accept fiat money, their USD value is defined by how much tethers people are willing to pay for them.
81
Some exchanges used Tether for wash trading
According to studies by New York University Professor Rosa Abrantes-Metz and former Federal Reserve bank examiner Mark Williams, some exchanges are accused of performing wash trade with Tether. Another study also concluded that at least half of 2017’s Bitcoin boom was a result of these wash trades.
82
The FBI has a lot of bitcoins
After seizing several wallets, the FBI holds the biggest Bitcoin wallet known, including one seized from the illicit online marketplace operator Ross Ulbricht, containing 144000 bitcoins and the Silk Road funds, which contained 30,000.
83
“Capital gain” taxes
In the United States, cryptocurrencies are subject to “capital gain” taxes. If you bought a number of cryptos for $10 and sold this amount for $100, you have earned $90 in capital gains, like a stock. But this will apply even if you don’t sell then: If you paid the same amount for the cryptos and then, because it appreciated, bought something worth $100, you’re also subject for $90 in capital gains taxes.
84
Bitcoin for Dummies
Bitcoin’s earliest mention in media occurred in a 2012 episode of the TV show The Good Wife called “Bitcoin for Dummies”. It has then been referenced in several other shows, including Parks and Recreation, The Simpsons, Supernatural and House of Cards, in 2014.
85
“Hodl” is the top used slang of the crypto community
The misspelling originated from a post from 2013 in the Bitcointalk Forum and have since then acquired the sense of “not selling or buying a crypto despite market apparent trends to do so”. Some investors had a lot of success applying this tactic, while for others this just resulted in massive losses.
86
Money laundering is profitable
An exchange used cryptocurrencies for laundering dollars. BTC-e was a major European exchange accused of laundering billions of USD over the past 6 years. His operator, Alexander Vinnik, is also accused of being involved and benefiting from some of the Mt. Gox hacks.
87
Most coins were never used
64% of the circulating Bitcoin was never “used” and probably will never be.
88
Bitcoin blocks are solved at a rate of 10 blocks per minute
Currently, a block can store up to approximately 2300 standard transactions. Their weight is mostly 1 MB (a number defined by the protocol), but, after SegWit was implemented, some blocks weighing up to 2 MB are being added to the chain.
89
Cardano (ADA) is a platform similar to Ethereum
It also supports ICOs, smart contracts and dApps, with the difference that each new feature to be implemented in the Cardano’s platform is subjected to the scientific method scrutiny, including independent peer-reviews. Even though they have an extensive roadmap, each of their announced updates was consistently delivered on or before the scheduled date stipulated by them, a rare trait among cryptocurrencies. They enjoy a unique wallet and validation system (called the Ouroboros), developed under the scientific philosophy, which is considered a reference in the blockchain technology.
90
Cryptocurrencies trading is completely illegal in few nations
Algeria, Bolivia, Bangladesh, Nepal, Morocco, Ecuador and Kyrgyzstan are countries where trading with cryptocurrencies is illegal. Russia has been giving signs it may join them too.
91
Bitcoin has undergone many “crashes” before
The most significant one to date being the 2004’s Mt Gox. incident. Still, some fiat currency crashes have been harsher than Bitcoin’s. The Turkish Lira, for example, devalued much more “Bloomberg scores” over the last 10 years.
92
There are free ways to acquire some initial coins
Besides ICOs, some cryptos in development decide to distribute their coin through “airdrops”. You should always be attentive to these, as they require only a newsletter signature or Facebook like. Stellar, the sixth more valuable cryptocurrency, has given 50% of its initial coins to people who participated in the “initial sign up program”.
93
Ripple’s initial coin distribution has been widely criticized, even by Jed McCaleb, one of its co-founders
Of the 100 billion created (they don’t have mining, so all their coins were distributed as the ledger started), 20 billion XRP were retained by the creators, who were also the founders of Ripple Labs. The creators gave the remaining 80% of the total to Ripple Labs, with the XRP intended "to incentivize market maker activity to increase XRP liquidity and strengthen the overall health of XRP markets.". This was received with a lot of criticism, as enthusiasts considered 20% going directly to the creators’ wallets as too much. Jed McCaleb, one of the founders, also recognized this amount as exorbitant and constantly demanded the team to either sell or donate their funds. Before leaving Ripple to fund Stellar, Jed placed a sell order for all his XRP at a really low price, which was viewed as both an attack to his former company and as a way to fund his new platform.
94
Satoshi Dice
There is a “blockchain based betting game” called SatoshiDice, in which users send a number of bitcoins to a wallet and the service decides the winning wager based on the first four numbers of the hash of their transaction, sending the payout for a winning through a transaction back to the address of the winner.
95
WikiLeaks received its 4000th bitcoin on Nov, 26
After the release of classified U.S. diplomatic cables in 2010, most payment services and credit cards blocked donations to WikiLeaks, including Visa, Mastercard, and PayPal. This caused them to initially lose 95% of all their revenue and started accepting donations in several cryptocurrencies, something they currently heavily rely on.
96
90% of all Bitcoin wallets contain less than 0.1 BTC
Most wallets created are never used or used and then discarded.
97
There is an ongoing project to turn San Juan in a “cryptoutopia”
A growing number of cryptocurrencies riches are selling their homes and cars and heading to Puerto Rico to escape from what they see as onerous state and federal taxes on their newly earned fortune. The head of the movement appears to be Brock Pierce, director of the Bitcoin Foundation and creator of the cryptocurrency EOS. Puerto Rico’s fiscal policy is extraordinarily more liberal than the US’. They plan to build a city where every payment is made with cryptocurrencies and all contracts are smart contracts to show how blockchain could reinvent society, so they are buying properties all over San Juan where they can build their own airports and found a city called “Sol”. Their headquarters, a 20,000-square-foot rented hotel, is called “the monastery”.
98
Power of decentralized application
There are many interesting decentralized applications already available. Most of them run through Ethereum’s nodes. One of the most popular is a game called Cryptokitties, where players breed virtual cats and can exchange them using Ethereum’s smart contracts.
99
One-sixth of the bitcoins are lost
People usually lose their bitcoins because they didn’t write down their keys to make a recovery possible. Thus, if they lose the device that had their wallet software installed, they won’t be able to recover their funds, as these softwares won’t open their wallets if the person doesn’t provide their private keys for recovery.
100
Malta is the world’s crypto capital
Malta, a small Mediterranean Island, is considered the world’s crypto capital. Besides having a very liberal stance on cryptocurrencies, regulated by the Virtual Financial Assets Act, the government created a Digital Innovation Authority Department which actually gives incentives for cryptocurrencies businesses. For this reason, many ICOs, blockchain businesses and exchanges are choosing to establish their operations on the island.