The universe of cryptocurrencies, especially bitcoin, is a treasure trove of fascinating tidbits, statistics, and numbers. This is made possible by its “public ledger” (a fancy term for a database), which records all pertinent transaction data, wallets, coins, and more – all easily accessible to the public.

In this post, we’ll delve into a collection of noteworthy bitcoin statistics and offer up some valuable insights.

Bitcoin statistics – general information

~19 million: This figure represents the total number of bitcoins that have been mined so far, and the rate at which new ones are introduced is slowing down. To break it down into individual “blocks,” the number comes to 778,378. As a result of multiple Halvings (a technical event that doubles the difficulty of mining bitcoin), the time it takes to reach the maximum amount of bitcoin available gets longer. This trend will continue until the year 2140, by which point all 21 million BTC will have been mined and will be in circulation.

~3 million: According to multiple sources of bitcoin statistics, it’s estimated that roughly 4 million bitcoins have been lost or are out of circulation. These losses occur when individuals who previously owned a significant amount of bitcoin can no longer access their holdings due to various reasons – such as hard drive failures or lost USB drives. Although this can be a frustrating experience for the affected parties, it could be viewed as a positive for other investors. Why, you ask? Because a smaller total supply could potentially lead to higher prices in the future.

850.000 BTC: This represents the number of bitcoins that were stolen during the largest exchange hack to date – Mt. Gox. Even today, numerous investors are still waiting to recoup even a fraction of their funds. At the time of the hack, the total value of the stolen bitcoin was a staggering USD 473 million. This serves as a stark reminder that choosing a trustworthy bitcoin exchange is of the utmost importance.

460 gigabytes: This number represents the size of the Bitcoin blockchain as of the spring of 2023. At the start of 2019 for example, the blockchain was a “mere” 197 GB in size, underscoring the expanding use of Bitcoin. If you’re curious as to why simple binary code (ones and zeros) occupies so much memory space, it’s because every bitcoin transaction is recorded and stored on the blockchain. As the number of transactions processed increases, so too does the amount of memory required. This is why utilizing a locally stored cryptocurrency wallet can take several days – it needs to be synchronized with the entire blockchain.

10.000 BTC: 22 May 2010 was known as ‘Pizza Day for Bitcoin’, when Laszlo Haniec paid 10 000 bitcoins for two pizzas at Papa John‘s.The topic originated on the Bitcointalk forum and is now legendary. Considering that a bitcoin was worth $0.01 at the time, it was not a bad deal. Laszlo will secretly regret this purchase forever.

16623 nodes: the total number of nodes in the bitcoin network is 16623 with the top three being in the United States, Germany and France. These nodes maintain the integrity of the network and follow all the rules implemented in the system. To run such a complete node, a computer with a hard disk of about 200 GB and a write speed of 100 MB/s is required. In addition, 2 GB of RAM, an Internet connection with an upload speed of at least 50 KB/s and the electricity needed to operate 24 hours a day, 365 days a year are required. You can check live data about Bitcoin nodes on the Bitnodes website.

7.500 BTC: Back in 2009, a British IT specialist started mining bitcoin on his laptop. When he decided to sell the device in 2013, he removed the hard drive and kept it as a backup, just in case bitcoin became valuable in the future. Unfortunately, the hard drive ended up in the trash when the owner cleaned out his flat later that year. Unbeknownst to him, the discarded hard drive contained 7,500 bitcoins, which had skyrocketed in value to a staggering $150 million by 2017. Despite the owner’s pleas, authorities initially refused to search for the hard drive in a nearby landfill, questioning whether it could still be functional after such a lengthy period and in such a state of disrepair. However, after the owner offered authorities a donation, the search eventually proved successful.

39 000 ATMs: The number of bitcoin ATMs worldwide has increased significantly in recent years. The statistics firm Statista estimates the number at 4,984 in the summer of 2019, a number that increased dramatically for the last 4 years and expected to keep growing in the coming years due to further policies and regulations in various countries.

10% women: women make up only 9.91% of the bitcoin community, up from 2% in 2017. This trend is expected to continue in the future.

17000 Lightning Network nodes: 4,644 LN nodes were operational on 10 June 2019 with active payment channels, already doubling the number since December 2018. Lightning Network is a blockchain-based solution capable of validating transactions in the order of milliseconds. Many bitcoin investors see great potential for the future use of bitcoin as a means of payment.

74% mining using renewable energy: The Coinshares Research Institute, in its latest mining report of 5 June 2019, estimates that 74.1% of all bitcoin mining will be done using renewable energy sources. This is a higher share than in any other highly scaled industry in the world.

Bitcoin price

1 000 000 USD: this is the price of bitcoin by 2020, according to John McAfee, one of the cryptocurrency’s biggest supporters. He initially announced that by 2020. Bitcoin will be worth USD 500,000. However, due to the huge price increase in 2017, he revised his target price upwards. Of course, such forecasts must be approached with caution, although McAfee called this target price conservative.

0.03 USD: When bitcoin first appeared on the exchange (bitcoinmarket.com), its price started at USD 0.03. From today’s perspective, this is surprising, given the speed of development that followed. However, there are probably very few people in the world who bought bitcoin back then and still own it today.

1000%: On 12 July 2010, there was a phenomenal price increase of 1000%. The price of bitcoin rose from $0.008 to $0.08, helping to draw more attention to the new currency.

Transactions in bitcoin

500.000 BTC: the largest bitcoin transaction measured in bitcoin cash. This occurred in April 2015 and was worth $100 million at the time. Transactions like these, which can theoretically take place across the borders of any country, highlight one of the biggest advantages of bitcoin

490.000 transactions: more than 490 000 transactions took place on the Bitcoin network in the 24 hours on 14 Dec 2017. This is only a fraction of the transactions carried out by major banks or payment service providers such as VISA. However, this development has increased significantly since the birth of bitcoin.

0.00031 BTC: The average transaction fee for 14,654 transactions is 0.00031 BTC (= $2.56). This figure clearly shows an advantage over other payment methods such as VISA/Mastercard, Western Union and Paypal

Mining Bitcoin

58.219,170 TH/s: This figure shows the hashing rate of the entire bitcoin network in Earth Hash/s as of 10 June 2019. One TH/s is equivalent to one trillion opportunities experienced in the mining process. This is an incredible number that cannot be grasped by the human brain. The development of Hashrate clearly shows the growing interest in bitcoin.

1.800 BTC: an average of 144 blocks are opened per day, with 12.5 bitcoins per block. Multiplying these two factors results in 1,800 bitcoins. This is before the number of bitcoins produced each day halves in 2020. However, with the increased computing power of miners, blocks of only 9.5 minutes (instead of 10 minutes) are common in recent years, so on most days the number is slightly higher

Bitcoin holdings

2.782,036 BTC in the top 100 wallets: Our bitcoin statistics to date show that there are more than 2.7 million bitcoins in thetop 100 crypto wallets. Many of these show a steady increase in numbers. These are the so-called ‘whales’ who hold bitcoins to speculate on long-term price growth. These include Satoshi Nakamoto’s wallet with 980,000 bitcoins and the Winklevoss brothers, who collectively hold more than 100,000 bitcoins. To appreciate the long-term trend, it is worth observing these portfolios.

34 million BTC wallets: According to a Statista study, this is the number of BTC wallets in the first quarter of 2019.

34% of active bitcoin users: The Chainanalysis study found that active bitcoin users are 34%.

30% Hodler’s 30%: 30% of all bitcoin investors invest long-term and have no plans to sell their bitcoin in the coming years, according to Chainanalysis. In absolute numbers, this corresponds to 6.4 million people. This number is expected to increase in the long term, as prices and volatility rise

25 MILLION+ customers: eToro, one of the largest and best-known trading systems, has more than 25 million registered customers in 2022. The service operates in 100+ countries and is popular with newcomers making their first cryptocurrency investments.

5% of bitcoin holders in the US: A survey by the Global Blockchain Council found that of the 5,000 respondents, 60% already own bitcoins and 5% have invested in them. This means that there are about 16 million bitcoin investors in the US.

16.251 tweets: here is how many tweets from 11-12 June contained mentions of bitcoin. In comparison, Ethereum had 4,973 such transactions in the same period and bitcoin cash only 507. The 2017 record is over 100,000 tweets per day. As a source of information on cryptocurrencies, Twitter is the number one

1.048,776 users on Reddit: in addition to the number of tweets, the number of people subscribed to the bitcoin subreddit is even higher. As of the beginning of June 2019, there are already more than one million users who want to be regularly updated on news in the world of bitcoin.

We hope that after reading all these bitcoin figures and statistics you have learnt more about cryptocurrencies and want to use them as a basis for future analysis.

If you have already decided to invest in bitcoin or other cryptocurrencies, we have prepared a long and extensive overview of the most reliable bitcoin trading platforms and exchanges where you can buy bitcoin.

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