These five stats about Bitcoin will make you stop and think
Even if you don’t own, HODL, or trade cryptocurrencies, you’ve probably seen news about the Bitcoin price action lately.
Blasting through the $13,000 barrier on July 10 and then struggling to keep its head over $10,000 ever since, the world’s largest cryptocurrency certainly puts on a show.
And those aren’t the only interesting numbers. Check out these five stats about Bitcoin that will make you stop and think.
Five interesting stats about Bitcoin
1) Less than 1% of the world uses Bitcoin
If that sounds woefully small, that’s because it is. And actually, it’s an awful lot less than 1% when you really crunch the numbers. For those of us grossly emerged in this industry, it’s hard not to eat, breathe, and sleep cryptocurrency. It’s also easy to forget that we’re still in the very early stages.
Most of the world hasn’t even heard of Bitcoin – and less than 1% actually uses it, with just 32 million Bitcoin wallets registered as of Q1 2019.
Cryptocurrency may feel all-consuming to some, but it’s barely a blip on the radar for most. This tweet from the Rhythm Trader sums it up rather well – don’t forget we’re still building the boat:
Thinking you're too late to buy bitcoin is like thinking you're too late to use the internet.
You haven't missed the boat, we are still building it.
— Rhythm (@Rhythmtrader) July 14, 2019
2) Female engagement in Bitcoin is growing
User numbers may still be a little low, but if Facebook’s Libra ever gets past the gatekeepers, that’s over two billion eyes that will eventually wander Bitcoin’s way. And despite the low numbers, transaction speed, hash rate, and network usage are all on the rise.
Even more interesting than that, however, is the fact that female engagement in Bitcoin has hit an all-time high at 9.91%. Again, that may sound small, but just last year it was only 3%. More women are entering the space, and that’s noteworthy in itself.
3) Bitcoin users prefer desktop over mobile – by far
When you consider that the world’s gone mobile, Bitcoin users seem to be bucking a major trend. Some 80% of all internet usage was believed to have been mobile in 2018. Yet, 75% of Bitcoin users are stubbornly sticking to their desktops. So why are these early adopters in technology sticking to their Macs and PCs?
Well, there are probably a few reasons behind this. Traders still need a large screen (or even two or three) to be able to get in the zone. It’s hard to make multiple major trading calls when you’re transacting from an Android.
Moreover, while there are more mobile hardware wallets coming out and wallets like the Ledger Nano X that connect with your phone via Bluetooth, many users still feel more secure making Bitcoin transactions from the safety and comfort of their homes.
4) There are more Bitcoin hashes than grains of sand
This is certainly an eye-opening statistic if it can actually be proven to be true. Although, anyone who’s ever wondered how many grains of sand there are on the earth probably reached the conclusion that it was impossible to count them. But according to Blockchain.com, somebody did.
The Bitcoin network hash rate has reached its highest record ever at an astonishing 69 quintillion hashes per second. In contrast to the underwhelming number of users, that is a very big number indeed (more than all the grains of sand on the earth, apparently).
5) 84.86% of all Bitcoins have already been mined
When you consider that Bitcoin has a hard cap at 21 million units, this may seem like another very high number. There are now 17,820,575 Bitcoins in existence, which works out at more than 80% of the entire supply.
Around 1,800 new Bitcoins are mined every day, leaving 3,179,425 Bitcoins left to be mined. At this point, it is thought that the network will maintain itself by miners taking their pay through transaction fees rather than block rewards.
The takeaway
Bitcoin really is a fascinating technology with so much more to it than its speculative price rallies. Just considering how small the user numbers are and how far we have to go shows how new this technology is – and how much potential it has.
The fact that Bitcoin is now being discussed at the highest level and that massive corporations are trying to get in should only help to validate its importance even further.
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