Bitcoin Usage Stats — The Growth of Bitcoin Exchanges

The year 2017 is a record-breaking year for Bitcoin. Right from the transactions to trading volumes, from registering for Bitcoin wallet to market cap, it has passed every possible metrics. The cryptocurrencies industry is emerging at a fast pace that it can be hard to take the magnitude of everything that is happening in Bitcoin. In another word, if you don’t stop and look around your Bitcoin wallet you could miss it.

It is an intangible digital currency which can be hard sometimes to appreciate where it is at and how far it has come from such humble beginnings in less than 9 years. The below statistics could help you to understand how Bitcoin came to life and making it easier to visualize the state of the network in recent times.

Only 21 Million bitcoins

Bitcoins are created through the process of mining. Bitcoin Mining is a kind of specialized process where computing hardware tries to solve complex mathematical problems in exchange for newly created bitcoins. Thus, there are only 21 million bitcoins are created yet. Mining works with virtual conception just like you played “Pokemon Go” from your smartphone. You will get gold coins with Bitcoin symbol during the process of mining.

Against the rising popularity of Bitcoin, its numbers are decreasing over the period of time as the mining increasing. The number will eventually reach zero in a minute. The final result of the mining process is a finite number of possible bitcoins that will ever be in circulation. That finite number will never exceed 21 million. So, there are just 21 million bitcoins out there across the world.

The last Bitcoin won’t be mined until 2140

Yes, you read that right. There is an algorithm that control show bitcoins are mined and it slows down the production over time. During mining, the bitcoins are released in blocks, and only 12.5 bitcoins release with each block. This number will cut in half every 210,000 blocks. In short, the number of bitcoins released at a time will eventually drop to 6.25 then 3.125, then 1.5625 and so on.

So, without diving deep into technical aspects, Bitcoin mining is regulated so that roughly sic blocks are created and released each hour. It is mathematically possible to determine when the magic number of 21 million will be reached. The latest predictions are determining the date May 7, 2140, for getting the last Bitcoin. Thus, the mining of Bitcoin will continue to circulate for the next 123 years.

One of the saddest examples is that a Bitcoin holder threw away his hard drive that was containing more than 7500 bitcoins which would be valued at $112 million today. In short, it is estimated that nearly 17% of the bitcoins that have been mined so far are lost forever.

10K bitcoins for just a pizza

In May 2010, somebody gave nearly 10,000 bitcoins to buy a pizza. If we convert the value of 10K bitcoins to the current day scenario, the value of pizza would be more than $84. Although this sounds crazy, back then, bitcoins were just useless and their prices were as low as $0.003.

Just two months prior to this incident, a man had literally wanted to sell his 10K bitcoins for just $50 but had failed miserably to find a buyer.

The actual cash value of bitcoins was just $0.003

At the first Bitcoin exchange marketplace known as BitcoinMarket.com which is no longer available, the first cash value of a Bitcoin was just $0.003. At that time people could get more than 30K bitcoins at just $100. Despite the poor market value, Bitcoin has risen from $968 at the beginning of the year 2017 to nearly $16,830 at the end of the year. Yes, this sounds pretty impressive and it is considered that the Bitcoin value has been increased by 561,000,000% since it was first time listed on an exchange.

One of the most successful examples of Bitcoin success story is Warren Buffett’s company, Berkshire Hathaway. The company was widely regarded as the best long-term investment company of all time and it is up by about 2,400,000% in the last 50 years since Warren Buffett overtook it. If you had bought just $1,000 bitcoins when it was first time available on the exchange, your initial investment would be around $5.6 billion in current day’s economy. Yes, this might amaze you and encourage you didn’t sell your holdings to jump to a few dollars which a lot of early adopters of Bitcoin did to own it.

Bitcoin is just 1/5 of world’s entire money

As per the reports disclosed in a recent survey, there is about $83.6 trillion money in the world. This estimation includes physical money and the money deposited in the financial institutes. There are around 13.7 billion bitcoins existing right now and as per the stats, Bitcoin is just one-fifth of the current world’s money.

Bitcoin will need 16% world’s money supply to reach about $1 million. This would be quite a stretch, but the point is that it is possible, while bitcoins still has a way to go before attempting anything. Besides, the predictions from the several experts stated that Bitcoin will sure to rise to $1 million.

Other stats

• There is 16.67 million of Bitcoin circulating in the market.

• It has dominated more than 58% of the crypto market.

• 96 countries have restricted the usage of bitcoins.

• It has an average transaction value of 0.103BTC.

• Nearly 457,000 bitcoin addresses are richer than $10,000.

• 715,000 bitcoin addresses are active in the last 24 hours.

• The total value of 100 richest Bitcoin addresses is more than $19 billion.

• There are more than 12,000 transactions per hour.

• 99,000 bitcoins were sent per hour.

• It has the trade value of $4.9 billion.

• Nearly 500,000 bitcoin wallets have been downloaded till now.

Conclusion

Although there are several problems on the way of Bitcoin achieving the mainstream acceptance, it is overcoming all the obstacles in a timely manner. From the mind-blowing statistics one thing clear that there are huge potentials for Bitcoin and much more than they are today.

Interested to know How Bitcoin change the World?

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