20 Facts About BTC Blockchain You Didn’t Know
Believe you're well-acquainted with Bitcoin's blockchain? Test your knowledge and see how many historical facts about the first cryptocurrency remain new to you.
- The Proof-of-Work concept was devised by Adam Back in 1997. He published an article titled "Hashcash — a denial of service countermeasure", and it was this work that Satoshi Nakamoto drew upon when conceptualizing Bitcoin.
- The initial versions of the blockchain that Satoshi worked on with Hal Finney were designed exclusively for Microsoft Windows. They fundamentally did not support other operating systems.
- . The actual birthday of Bitcoin is August 18, 2008, the day the bitcoin.org domain was officially registered. It was on this day that the name of the forefather of all cryptocurrencies was finally decided upon.
- On October 31, 2008, Satoshi released a paper titled "Bitcoin: A Peer-to-Peer Electronic Cash System." It spanned a mere 9 pages.
- Satoshi anticipated issues related to double-spending (51%) and the Sybil attack. He addressed these in a chapter discussing consensus and decentralization.
- The first block was mined on January 3, 2009, and contained the message "Chancellor on brink of second bailout for banks"—a headline from "The Times" published that day.
- Initially, the BTC block size was 1 MB. It was later updated to support 1.5 MB blocks. Currently, block sizes often exceed 1.8 MB. However, in theory, the maximum capacity could be 4 MB.
- The first transaction by Satoshi took place on January 12, 2009. It was sent to Hal Finney and consisted of 50 BTC.
- Every year, the first cryptocurrency network becomes, on average, 25% "heavier" since its inception.
- As of the writing of this article (August 2023), the Bitcoin blockchain stands at 502 GB in size.
- Each block can hold about 3,000 transactions.
- The main signature method used on the BTC blockchain is the ECDSA (Elliptic Curve Digital Signature Algorithm). It uses a distinct, one-time random number for each signature, ensuring it never duplicates.
- Satoshi set the initial reward for miners at 50 BTC for finding the correct hash. The reward was halved for the first time on November 28, 2012. By April 2024, the reward will further decrease to 3.125 BTC.
- The last scheduled halving is set for August 2133, at block 6,720,000. The reward at that point will be a minuscule 0.0000001 BTC.
- The final Bitcoin is estimated to be mined around the year 2140.
- Node operators are spread across every continent, with Antarctica being the only exception.
- The USA boasts the most full nodes, making up 12.5% of the total count.
- The hashing speed in August 2023 stands at about 424 million TH/s.
- Bitcoin employs the SHA-256 hashing algorithm, crafted by the US National Security Agency in 2002.
- To reach consensus, the Bitcoin network uses approximately 16.27 GW of energy daily, translating to around 142 TW yearly.
Despite its high energy consumption and a confirmation time of 6 to 12 minutes per block, Bitcoin remains the leading cryptocurrency by market cap. Impressively, it also has the highest number of active addresses, nearing a whopping 48 million as reported by CoinGlass.
