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01Bitcoin's total supply is capped at 21 million coins, the first widely-adopted digital asset with a hard-coded scarcity limit.
02The first real-world Bitcoin transaction was 10,000 BTC for two pizzas in 2010 — worth hundreds of millions of dollars at recent prices.
03Satoshi Nakamoto's identity remains unknown; the last known message attributed to the pseudonymous creator was posted in 2010.
04Roughly 3-4 million BTC are estimated to be permanently lost due to forgotten keys, discarded drives, or death of holders.
05Ethereum's 2022 'Merge' cut its energy consumption by an estimated 99.9% by switching from proof-of-work to proof-of-stake.
06The CPI-U inflation index used by economists has compounded to roughly 30% cumulative inflation between 2017 and 2026.
07Gold has been used as a store of value for over 5,000 years, making it the longest continuously-used monetary asset in human history.
08The S&P 500 has historically returned about 7% per year after inflation, over long multi-decade periods.
09Bitcoin has undergone four 'halving' events, each cutting new coin issuance in half roughly every four years.
10The 2017 crypto bull run saw Bitcoin rise from under $1,000 to nearly $20,000 within a single calendar year.
11In 2018, Bitcoin fell more than 80% from its all-time high, one of the steepest drawdowns of any major asset class that decade.
12There are more than 20,000 distinct cryptocurrencies tracked by major aggregators, though a small handful account for most trading volume.
13A 'stablecoin' is a token designed to track the value of a fiat currency like the US dollar, rather than fluctuate freely.
14The Bitcoin network processes a new block roughly every 10 minutes, by design, regardless of how many miners are competing.
15El Salvador became the first country to adopt Bitcoin as legal tender, in 2021.
16The term 'HODL' originated from a 2013 typo of 'hold' in an online forum post during a market crash.
17Compound inflation, even at a modest 2-3% annually, can erode roughly half of a currency's purchasing power over 25-30 years.
18Warren Buffett has publicly compared Bitcoin's value to 'rat poison squared,' while others consider it 'digital gold.'
19The largest single-day Bitcoin price swings have exceeded 20%, a volatility level rarely seen in traditional blue-chip stocks.
20Gold's price is influenced heavily by central bank buying; several central banks became large net gold buyers in the 2020s.
21The 'time value of money' means $1,000 received today is worth more than $1,000 received ten years from now, purely due to inflation and opportunity cost.
22Dollar-cost averaging (investing a fixed amount on a regular schedule) is a strategy designed specifically to reduce the impact of volatility.
23The IRS treats cryptocurrency as property, not currency, meaning every crypto-to-crypto trade can be a taxable event in the US.
24A '51% attack' refers to a scenario where a single entity controls the majority of a blockchain's mining or validation power.
25Ethereum introduced 'smart contracts,' self-executing code that many later blockchains have since adopted or adapted.
26The Nasdaq-listed Bitcoin ETFs approved in January 2024 marked the first US spot Bitcoin funds available to mainstream brokerage investors.
27Historical data shows gold and the S&P 500 have a low, sometimes negative, correlation — a key reason investors use gold to diversify.
28A single Bitcoin block reward started at 50 BTC in 2009 and has since been halved to 3.125 BTC as of the 2024 halving.
29The 'Lindy effect' suggests that the longer something has existed, the longer it's likely to continue existing — often cited in gold's favor.
30Roughly two-thirds of all Bitcoin has not moved wallets in over a year, according to on-chain analytics — a common proxy for 'long-term holder' behavior.
31Cryptocurrency markets trade 24/7/365, unlike stock exchanges which close nights, weekends, and holidays.
32The word 'inflation' in economics originally described the inflating of a money supply, not rising prices directly — the price effect is a consequence.
33Central banks target roughly 2% annual inflation as their informal 'stable prices' goal in most developed economies.
34A famous 2010s meme asset, Dogecoin, began as a joke referencing an internet meme and later reached a multi-billion-dollar market capitalization.
35The most expensive Bitcoin transaction fee ever recorded exceeded $1 million during a period of extreme network congestion.
36Real (inflation-adjusted) returns are the only returns that reflect actual gains in purchasing power — nominal returns can be misleading over long periods.
37The 60/40 stock-bond portfolio has been a default institutional benchmark for decades, though its usefulness has been debated since 2022's simultaneous stock-bond selloff.
38Gold mining produces roughly 3,000-3,500 tonnes of new supply per year, a small percentage of the total gold ever mined.
39Bitcoin's volatility has generally trended downward over its lifetime, even though it remains far more volatile than equities.
40The 'wash sale rule,' which disallows claiming a tax loss on repurchased securities, has historically not applied to cryptocurrency in the US the same way it applies to stocks.
41A single satoshi, the smallest unit of Bitcoin, is one hundred-millionth of one BTC.
42Some economists argue store-of-value assets like gold and Bitcoin serve as a hedge against currency debasement rather than a productive investment.
43The Consumer Price Index basket of goods is updated periodically to reflect changing consumer habits, meaning the 'basket' itself evolves over time.
44Bitcoin mining difficulty automatically self-adjusts roughly every two weeks to keep block times near ten minutes.
45Several sovereign wealth funds and pension funds began disclosing small Bitcoin-related allocations for the first time in the mid-2020s.
46The word 'capital' originally derives from the Latin 'capitalis,' relating to the head — historically counted in heads of cattle as an early store of wealth.
47A 4% 'safe withdrawal rate' is a widely cited (and widely debated) retirement planning rule of thumb from a 1990s study of historical US markets.
48Ethereum's supply is not fixed like Bitcoin's; it can be mildly inflationary or deflationary depending on network activity and fee-burning mechanics.
49Studies on investor behavior consistently show that individual investors, on average, underperform the very funds they invest in, largely due to poorly timed buying and selling.
50A single ounce of gold in the early 1970s cost roughly $35; by the mid-2020s it traded at multi-thousand-dollar levels, though most of that reflects currency debasement, not gold 'growing.'
Facts list last refreshed 2026. New entries added periodically — subscribe below to get notified.