Bitcoin is officially included in the Guinness Book of World Records. The announcement was made on the GuinnessWorldRecords.com website page, which reads:
“The first decentralized cryptocurrency was Bitcoin, described in a white paper published online by “Satoshi Nakamoto” on August 18, 2008. A working implementation of the concept was completed by January 3, 2009, when Nakamoto mined the first block on the blockchain and the open source client was released to the public on January 9, 2009.”
Bitcoin: the first crypto to enter Guinness World Records
The recognition of cryptocurrencies by a mainstream pillar such as Guinness World Records indicates that blockchain and digital assets have been among the most publicly touched topics in the past two years.
In addition, Bitcoin also wins two other important records in Guinness World Records: the record as the most valuable cryptocurrency due to its market cap and the record as the world’s first decentralized cryptocurrency, following its launch in early 2009.
Also of note is the fact that the Guinness World Records book added the category “Cryptomania” in the latest edition along with other records involving cryptocurrencies, fan tokens and NFTs.
Among the achievements mentioned in the book we also see the record sale of a CryptoPunk NFT and the fact that El Salvador became the first country to adopt BTC as legal tender.
What the book of records says about Bitcoin
Guinness World Records writes in the description:
“Bitcoin was developed as a solution to the challenge of regulating a digital currency without any centralized organization for overseas transactions. Previous attempts to create digital currencies use similar cryptographic techniques to identify users and record transactions, however they required a trusted third party (acting as a bank) to ensure that so-called “double spending” did not occur, meaning that users spent the same money more than once.”
The book of records points out that other attempts have been made before, but they all eventually had to rely on third parties. Indeed, among the most surprising and monumental records recorded by Cryptomania is the innovation of Bitcoin.
The last part described in the book attests to the authorship of the creator, Satoshi Nakamoto, and his role in the project under a pseudonym:
“The creator of Bitcoin identified himself on the Cypherpunks mailing list as “Satoshi Nakamoto”, who later turned out to be a pseudonym. It is unknown who Nakamoto is (or if he is actually a group identity), but experts who have reviewed his posts and code believing Nakamoto was an established member of the community, rather than a newly arrived outsider. Bitcoin wallet linked to Nakamoto’s initial transactions contains around 600,000 bitcoins (with a face value of $ 21 billion as of February 24, 2022), but has been inactive for more than a decade.”
At first glance, it is not easy to understand the whys and what, for example, a blockchain is. However, it took contextualizing decades of cryptocurrency research to understand what factor made Bitcoin different from all previous projects.
NFTs and fan tokens in the book of records
The OG NFT CryptoPunks project also entered the list of “most expensive NFT collectibles.” This was due to the purchase of CryptoPunk #5822 for $23.7 million, or 8,000 Ether, on 12 February this year by entrepreneur Deepak Thapliya.
However, Beeple’s record NFT sale of $69.3 million was not taken into account, as the company described a collectible NFT as a “set of limited edition artworks built around pre-rendered models.”
Not only NFTs, fan tokens also appear as a category in the book. The Manchester City token – launched through Socios in June 2021 – was listed as the “most valuable fan token” with a market cap of about $25 million as of 18 October 2022.
El Salvador was also listed in the book for being the “first country to adopt Bitcoin as legal tender” in June last year.
The prestigious book states::
“It was hoped that this move, condemned by the World Bank, would reduce the cost of international transfers. An important issue for a country that depends on the money sent home by workers abroad.”
Another Guinness World Record was broken last week. As a matter of fact, the crypto exchange Binance revealed that it broke the world record for holding the largest lecture on cryptocurrencies to date, with 289 people in attendance at Blockchain Land Nuevo León on 7 October.
In addition, it seems that in each edition of Guinness World Records they try to reflect the zeitgeist of that year and the topics that readers are likely to discuss. So, it can be inferred that cryptocurrencies will join space travel and TikTok as key topics.
The intent of the Guinness Book of Records appears to be to follow the world of cryptocurrencies with interest in the coming years as the technology behind them develops and a wider range of applications are found as a result.
The dawn of the Bitcoin cryptocurrency
It is important to recall, starting with the creation of Bitcoin, the path taken to earn a place in Guinness World Records, albeit very broadly.
As anticipated earlier, Bitcoin is a cryptocurrency and an international currency payment system created in 2009 by an anonymous inventor (or group of inventors), known by the pseudonym Satoshi Nakamoto, who developed an idea and later introduced it on the Internet in late 2008.
By financial experts, Bitcoin is not classified as a currency, but as a currently highly volatile store of value. Therefore, unlike most traditional currencies, Bitcoin does not make use of a central entity or sophisticated financial mechanisms.
Rather, the value is determined solely by supply and demand leverage. It uses a database distributed among network nodes that keep track of transactions, but it uses cryptography to manage functional aspects, such as the generation of new currency and the attribution of Bitcoin ownership.
Noteworthy, over the years, has been the positive surge in the price of Bitcoin.
The first exchange rate is dated 5 October 2009, which set the value of one dollar at 1,309.03 BTC.
Subsequently, Bitcoin first reached $1,000 on 27 November 2013. New all-time highs were reached on 17 December 2017, reaching the value of $20,000 per Bitcoin.
The value then fell rapidly, dropping below $8,000 in February 2018 and stabilizing around $6,000 for the rest of 2018. Since 2019, the value has fluctuated from a low of around $3,500 in January to over $40,000 in December 2020.
On 8 February 2021, after Tesla made a $1.5 billion purchase of Bitcoin, it increased its value to over $69,000. Bitcoin established a trading range from $68,978 and $65,468 to $43,451 and $38,664 after a correction in December 2021.
Source: https://en.cryptonomist.ch/2022/10/19/bitcoin-enters-guinness-world-records/