Cryptocurrency came out of nowhere with the launch of Bitcoin in 2009. Today, most people that you stop and ask on the street will have at the very least heard of cryptocurrency, and many will even hold some.

Now, let’s talk crypto in numbers.

Below, you will find 50+ cryptocurrency statistics and facts that will provide you with more insight into the digital asset industry and markets.

Bitcoin in Numbers

If you are talking about cryptocurrency, you have to start with Bitcoin.

Bitcoin first appeared in the seminal Bitcoin whitepaper on October 31, 2008. Around two and a half months later, on January 12, 2009, the first transaction took place on the Bitcoin network between the pseudonymous creator(s) of Bitcoin, Satoshi Nakamoto, and early Bitcoin code contributor, Hal Finney.

Bitcoin is an open, peer-to-peer, permissionless digital currency that enables anyone in the world with an internet connection to store, send, and receive funds without the need for a financial intermediary.

In its early years, Bitcoin enabled low-cost, fast peer-to-peer transactions. As the Bitcoin network grew, transaction fees and times increased, making it less of a payment network and more of a gold-like alternative investment asset. Hence, why bitcoin is often referred to as “digital gold.”

However, with the creation of the Bitcoin Lightning Network, low-cost payments can once again be made with “lightning speed” using Bitcoin.

Key Bitcoin figures:

One bitcoin (BTC) is currently worth around $5,400 (on March 15, 2020)
The total market value of bitcoin is $99,257,557,910 (on March 15, 2020)
There are 18,271,364 BTC in existence
The total coin supply of bitcoin is 21 million
The last bitcoin will be mined in the year 2140
The Bitcoin network can currently process seven transactions per second on-chain
There are around 10,000 Bitcoin nodes scattered across the globe
Bitcoin miners receive 25 BTC per new block mined (as of May 12, 2020)
In December 2017, one bitcoin was worth over $20,000
There are around 70 forks of Bitcoin, most notably Bitcoin Cash and Bitcoin SV
The Bitcoin hash rate is 105,324,840 TH/s (on March 15, 2020)
The size of the Bitcoin blockchain is 39 GB
Over 512,717,930 bitcoin transactions have taken place
The average Bitcoiner is a European or American male aged between 25 to 34
There are over 460 million bitcoin addresses
An estimated 23 million entities hold bitcoin

Bitcoin Lightning Network Stats (as of March 16, 2020):

The Lightning Network has 11,854 nodes
Out of all nodes, 6,496 have active channels
There are 35,808 payment channels with a network capacity of 904.55 BTC ($4,843,799.50)
The average channel capacity stands at 025 BTC ($135.10)
The median base fee of a Lightning transaction is 1 satoshi ($0.000053549)

Visualization of the Lightning Network by 1ML

Now that we have covered the hard data, let’s look at some fun facts about Bitcoin.

Interesting Bitcoin facts:

We still don’t know who Satoshi Nakamoto is
The smallest denomination of bitcoin is known as a satoshi
Bitcoin is mentioned on social media every 3 seconds
On May 22, 2010, a man paid for two pizzas with 10,000 BTC (worth over $5.4 million today!)
Only 990 bitcoin wallets hold more than $10 million in BTC
There are over 5,000 Bitcoin ATMs across the globe

While bitcoin makes up the majority of the crypto market, it’s important to note that there are also thousands of other digital currencies and tokens. So, let’s look at the overall crypto market.

The Crypto Markets in Numbers

In the digital asset market, you can find a wide range of different cryptographic assets, including digital currencies, utility tokens, reward tokens, security tokens, asset-backed tokens, and stablecoins.

The variety in the type of digital assets enables investors – especially those who only have limited access to the traditional capital markets – to gain investment exposure to asset classes they would typically not be able to access. However, that does not mean that institutional investors haven’t jumped on the Crypto bandwagon yet.

Today, there are several banks and asset managers, most notably in Switzerland and the US, that are actively involved in the trading of crypto-based financial products as well as digital assets directly.

Now, let’s look at the crypto market in numbers.

Crypto market figures:

There are currently 5,201 cryptoassets (on March 15, 2020)
The crypto market has a total market capitalization of over $155 billion (on March 15, 2020)
Bitcoin makes up 63.8% of crypto’s market value
The top 10 digital assets make up around 88% of crypto’s market value
The popular stablecoin Tether USD occasionally sees more daily transactions than Bitcoin
Blockchain startups have raised over $31 billion
There have been 1,799 token sales since mid-2016
48% of all token sales were based in the US, followed by 12.78% in Singapore and 10.5% in the UK
The majority of ICO tokens are down by more than 95% since their all-time highs
In 2020, only around $20 million were raised in token sales as the ICO has fallen out of favor with investors
There are over 300 digital asset exchanges across the globe
The most popular crypto trading app, Coinbase, has over 30 million users

Crypto market facts:

Cryptocurrency trading is illegal in some countries and unregulated in most
To trade crypto, all you need is an internet connection and a few dollars that you can transfer to a digital asset exchange
A large portion of daily crypto trading takes place using perpetual futures contracts on bitcoin as opposed to spot bitcoin
OTC (over-the-counter) trading volumes are said to exceed exchange-traded volumes by several multiples
Early adopters – often referred to as “whales” – are among the biggest market participants in crypto
Blockchain-powered central bank digital currencies (CBDCs) have become a hot topic
Over a dozen central banks across the globe are considering issuing central bank digital currencies
China will most likely become the first country to issue a CBDC

Blockchain Industry in Numbers

Now that we have covered Bitcoin and the broad cryptoasset market let’s talk about blockchain industry stats.

If it were up to (most) financial institutions and governments, we would live in a world that was full of “blockchain, not bitcoin.” What that means is that the powers that tend to disapprove of cryptocurrencies but are fans of blockchain technology due to the disruptive nature of decentralized financial technologies, such as Bitcoin.

As a result of the growing demand for blockchain solution, the blockchain industry has grown substantially in the past few years. Its growth was further pushed by the 2017 crypto gold rush, which brought blockchain onto the map.

Blockchain market facts and figures:

The global blockchain market is expected to grow to $60 billion by 2024 (says IBM)
In 2019, $2.9 billion was spent on blockchain technology (according to Statista)
Global spending on blockchain tech is expected to grow from 1.5 billion in 2018 to an estimated 15.9 billion by 2023 (according to Statista)
There are over a dozen blockchain startup, “unicorns.”
There are 4,504 Blockchain startups globally (according to Angelist)
There are 1,130 blockchain angel investors (according to Angelist)
The “crypto winter” that followed the 2017 “crypto gold rush” caused dozens of startup failures and thousands of layoffs across the globe
For 53% of corporations, blockchain has become “a critical priority for their organizations,” according to a Deloitte survey
The financial sector has the most blockchain trials and implementations out of all global industries
90% of North American and European banks that have experimented with blockchain (says Thomas Research)
Blockchain jobs listing tripled between 2017 and 2018 on LinkedIn
Microsoft and IBM are battling it out to become to go-to enterprise blockchain solutions provider
The Chinese government has declared that it wants to implement blockchain technology at a nationwide level