The world of cryptocurrencies has made tremendous growth in the financial market across the world. People have become so interested in learning about cryptocurrencies and want to trade and invest in such currencies. Bitcoin is the most demanded and trending cryptocurrency that has been eye-catchy for individuals and governments, and central authorities in today’s time. If you are a beginner and the expert investors have provided you a whole guide about bitcoin, then you might be scratching your head. You can visit here if you have any questions about bitcoin.
If you are keen to learn about some of the interesting yet surprising facts about bitcoin, then you are in the right place. Here, we will explore some surprising facts that you don’t have any idea about.
The first real bitcoin transaction was the purchase of 2 pizzas.
In 2010 when bitcoin’s value was very low, a programmer named Laszlo bought two pizzas for 10,000 bitcoins. At that time, because of the low value of bitcoin, which was around 25 USD, people used to exchange bitcoins as appreciation or to buy small things. Some people don’t believe it, but yes, the first real transaction was done by an early adapter of bitcoin. Laszlo was unaware that bitcoin was gain popularity in the next few years, and its value will rise.
People came to know about this historical transaction when Laszlo wrote a forum in which he mentioned that he bought two pizzas for 10,000 bitcoins with ease. He also said that people would consider him an idiot, but that was an immense prospect for him.
Is DigiCash the forefather of bitcoin?
In the world of cryptocurrencies, bitcoin is described as the first cryptocurrency that is based on cryptographic principles. Only a few people remember, but the first cryptocurrency was DigiCash, Which was created many years before the concept of bitcoin was released. DigiCash is known to be the ancestor of bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies. Because DigiCash didn’t depend on blockchain technology and entered into the mainstream, this is the reason why the financial market is not aware of it.
Despite considering bitcoin as an electronic medium of exchange, DigiCash was the first attempt to create an electronic payment system. It was created by David Chauman, who wanted to create a system that makes anonymous transactions possible.
The smallest unit of bitcoin is not Satoshi.
Most people think of Satoshi as the smallest unit, but you all will be surprised when you will learn the fact. Undoubtedly Satoshi is the smallest unit, which means bitcoin can be divided into eight zeroes after the decimal point in its value. Still, it is never said that Satoshi’s can’t be divided further.
It is possible to divide Satoshi and all it comes to the Lightning Network and micropayments.
Hackers created around 185 billion bitcoins.
The bitcoin network is dependent on blockchain technology, which allows everyone with high computing power to mine bitcoins. This has led to an error in bitcoin blocks for the first time where a large number of bitcoins were created. This incident happened on block number 74,638. But this issue was solved after hours when it was discovered that a new version of the bitcoin network was introduced, i.e., 0.3.10.
The bitcoin community hasn’t done anything till now and has ignored it that 184 billion bitcoin never existed. Those large numbers of bitcoins were removed from blockchain by miners, and this incident was also known as the “value of overflow incident.”
The private keys of the bitcoin wallet are integers with a power of 77
The blockchain uses cryptographic principles that make it impossible for anyone to decrypt the mathematical algorithms and know the private key of any wallet user. In order to decode or decrypt the private key, you have to spend many years working on it. A lot of advanced computing power is used, and we can say precisely that the integers have the power of 77.
It is next to impossible to break the private key of any bitcoin wallet. The scientists are working more on making the cryptography resistance and discovering special devices that will prevent fraudsters from breaking the code.