Bitcoin’s first decade has witnessed a seminal sea change in the way investors now evaluate a “currency” in digital terms, and with these changing times, an historical fact pattern has emerged like none other before it. Our lexicon is now filled with crypto phrases and abbreviations to beat the band. Pretty soon, especially for the holidays, you might spot a new party game called “Bitcoin Trivial Pursuit”.
Just in case you happen upon one of these games in progress, you might want to be armed with a few facts that may surely have missed the trivia radar screen. Here are five obscure facts for reference purposes, courtesy of the playful folks over at Bitcoinist:
Obscure Fact #1
We have all heard of hackers compromising crypto exchanges, but did you know that a hacker actually found a way to add 184 billion BTC to the blockchain? Yes, this blockchain snafu occurred in 2010, when a crafty crook created his hoard at a single address, a tale that garnered the name of the “value overflow incident”. Bitcoin creators immediately issued a new version, which plugged the “hole in the dyke” and erased the newly minted coins. No funds were lost.
Obscure Fact #2
You surely have heard of Bitcoin Cash, a spin-off from the parent Bitcoin source that was the result of a “hard fork”… but do you know of any other Bitcoin derivations? Or how many? For the actual token names, you will have to refer to the “Map of Coins” website, but, as for a number… wait for it… In addition to “BCH”, there have been another 435 Bitcoin “offspring” to join the crypto family via direct and indirect forks.
Obscure Fact #3
Have you ever turned on a Bitcoin “faucet”? This term applies to any type of reward system that dispenses one or more “satoshi” for performing some requested task (Do you remember that 1 satoshi is a hundredth of a millionth BTC). If you were fortunate enough back in 2010, Gavin Andresen turned on the first “faucet”, which poured out 5 BTC for merely visiting his website. He had hoped the promotional stunt would increase awareness and usage of the then fledgling Bitcoin. Hopefully, the faucet never went dry, and Gavin held his remaining stash until prices escalated.
Obscure Fact #4
We often hear about “Whale” accounts, especially the top one hundred addresses that hold 10,000 BTC and up. The top four addresses account for nearly $5.6 billion in value. What about on the low end? No one ever speaks of the folks with addresses with one BTC or less. The latest figure from the Crypto-sphere is that 732,982 of these addresses exist.
Obscure Fact #5
Bitcoin values have appreciated greatly from those long gone early days, establishing an All-Time-High of nearly $20,000 in early 2018, before crashing down to $3,130 by last December. It now hovers around $10,300. This “inflation” in price has also affected the smallest denomination for BTC. We mentioned the “satoshi” above, 1 satoshi is a hundredth of a millionth BTC or 0.00000001 BTC, which goes by the call sign of “SAT”. We used to think that a SAT was the smallest form of BTC, but now we have a Milli-satoshi or “MSAT”, which is 0.00000000001 BTC. Is that clear now?
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