Bitcoin Is Still Magical
A look at crypto history… when this excellent — and still relevant — animated video explainer of how Bitcoin works made the rounds online, the total market value of all the bitcoins in the world was about $2 billion.
As of earlier today, the total estimated market value of all bitcoins out there is above $905 billion.
Also of note, since this explainer video was released on Vimeo by its creator back in 2012, Bitcoin’s network has undergone two block halvings — a once every roughly four years’ programmed event in which the mining reward is cut in half, or “halved.”
Back when the video was uploaded, miners earned 25 BTC for each successfully solved block. That reward amount was halved to 12.5 BTC about four years after the video, then was halved again to its current mining reward rate of 6.25 BTC per block. A new block is solved roughly every 10 minutes or so, meaning at the current reward rate only 900 new Bitcoin total are mined roughly every 24 hours.
Additionally, by November of this year, about 90 percent of all Bitcoin is expected to have been mined.
I’m retiring from journalism in a week’s time. If you’ve enjoyed my reporting and commentary over the years, here’s a BTC address, for the champagne & beer fund. 1AbST3a71p9CT7NfqXbn35VLJmHLDWNNg6
Got Bitcoin right, got Pizzagate right, got Trump sorta not being the real deal right — and rather than struggle in this legacy censorship environment, better to exit altogether. Better to leave this broken Internet with dignity, and some great stories to tell the next generation one day.
I could focus on all the negatives — and there have been many. But the last few years have been magical also. They failed to crush Bitcoin whey they needed to, and now it may change the whole world, given enough runway. Time will tell.