The Good Tech Companies - Top 5 Surprising, Mysterious, and Fun Facts About Crypto

Episode Date: August 13, 2025

This story was originally published on HackerNoon at: https://hackernoon.com/top-5-surprising-mysterious-and-fun-facts-about-crypto. Whether you’re into tech or just love a good story, crypto is full of surprises that are too curious to ignore. Let’s dive into the most intriguing ones. Check more stories related to web3 at: https://hackernoon.com/c/web3. You can also check exclusive content about #Bitcoin, #blockchain-fun-facts, #satoshi-nakamoto, #bitcoin-pizza, #bitcoin-citadels, #crypto-mystery, #obyte, #good-company, and more. This story was written by: @obyte. Learn more about this writer by checking @obyte's about page, and for more stories, please visit hackernoon.com. Cryptocurrency is full of strange, mysterious, and downright fascinating stories. Nobody really knows who created Bitcoin, but the person behind it vanished in 2010. Satoshi Nakamoto has 1.1 million Bitcoins, worth over $118 billion, and never spent a single one.

This audio is presented by Hacker Noon, where anyone can learn anything about any technology. Top five surprising, mysterious and fun facts about crypto by Obite. Cryptocurrency is often seen as a roller coaster of prices and tech jargon, but behind the charts and headlines lies a treasure trove of strange, mysterious, and downright fascinating stories. It's a space where billion-dollar fortunes gudushed for years, where a slice of pizza once helped launch an entire financial revolution, and where explorers once once carried crypto tokens up Mount Everest, for better or worse. Some parts sound like urban legends, but they're all true, or at least mostly true. Whether you're into tech or just love a good

story, crypto is full of surprises that are too curious to ignore. Let's dive into some of the most intriguing ones, Satoshi's Bitcoins and Black Swan wallets. You probably know that nobody really knows who created Bitcoin. The person or group, behind the name Satoshi Nakamoto vanished from the internet in 2010, Ondaz never resurfaced. But here's a weirder thing. Satoshi mined around 1.1 million BTCs worth over $118,000 per BTC, and never spent a single one. These coins are spread across thousands of addresses, most famously starting with 1A1ZP1E 5Q Geffi 2DMPTFTL5 SLMV7 Dithna, the first ever Bitcoin address. Many speculate about why Satoshi hasn't touched the money. Is he gone for good? Some cypher punk suspects, like Hal Finney or Len Sassiman, are sadly gone, indeed. Hiding in plain sight,

or did he purposefully vanish to avoid influencing Bitcoin's future? The mystery deepens when you consider so-called black swan wallets. These area addresses holding billions of dollars in Bitcoin that haven't moved in over a decade. Some believe they could trigger chaos if they suddenly cashed out, hence the Black Swan nickname, like a rare, dramatic event. You know, if there's a billion dollar sellout, prices are going to crash. But chances are, many of them will never be awake again. Probably because their owners lost their private keys. One famous case is James Howells, a British man who accidentally threw away a hard drive with 8,000 Bitcoins. That hard drive is now buried somewhere in a Welsh landfill. Estimates suggest that around 8, 5% of all Bitcoins are

permanently lost, according to chain aliasis and fortune. That's roughly 1.8 million BTC gone forever, locked in wallets no one can access. If that's not the digital version of buried treasure, we don't know what is. Crypto has value because of a pizza. If you've ever heard that someone bought a pizza with Bitcoin, it's not just a meme, it's a founding moment. Back in 2010, a programmer named Laslo Hanachemade history by paying 10,000 BTC for two pizzas. That was That was the first time Bitcoin was used in a real-world transaction. At the time, it was worth about $40. Today, those coins would be worth over $1 billion.

That's probably the most expensive pepperoni ever. Why was this pizza purchase such a big deal? Because before that, Bitcoin had no real value. It was just experimental code and theory. But the second someone traded it for a physical good, it crossed a line, from concept to currency. That opened the door for all the other cryptocurrencies we know. today. Without that greasy milestone, it's hard to say how long it would have taken for

Bitcoin to gain traction. As a tribute to this iconic transaction, the Obite platform offers a fun way to simulate it. On the Obite TestNet wallet, you can order a virtual pizza through a chatbot, Hawaiian, pepperoni, or Mexican, just for fun. It's not about actual food, but about learning how crypto payments work. Since TestNet token shave no real value, it's a zero-risk playground. You can also practice sending transactions, using smart contracts, and even explore 2FA and multi-signature wallets. Crypto nations and citadels, while some countries fear crypto, others are going all in. El Salvador made headlines in 2021 by declaring Bitcoin legal tender, the first country to do so. It even launched its own wallet, Chivo, and installed

crypto ATMs. Ukraine, especially after 2022, leaned heavily into crypto for receiving. receiving international aid and donations. It's a unique situation where digital assets helped fund military and humanitarian efforts in a real war. But it doesn't stop there. The concept of Bitcoin Citadels, crypto-powered communities where enthusiasts live off-grid using only digital money, has gone from stories to real life. From Bitcoin Beach in El Zanti, El Salvador, to crypto retreats in Portugal, people are experimenting

with life in a fully decentralized economy. htttps colon slash www www youtube com shorts k tkr 7 underscore evsp 4 and then there's asgardia a self-proclaimed space nation yes really founded by russian scientist egore ashur bailey it wants to be the first independent nation in space asgardia even has its own crypto token solar you said for internal services sure it's a bit out there literally but it shows how far the idea of borderless digital first societies can go. Related ideas like network states, popularized by Bologi Shrini Vassan, also suggest that future countries may be founded on shared values, not geography, powered by distributed platforms and decentralized money. Sounds like sci-fi, but it's already happening. An ill-fated ICO, the world of initial coin offerings, ICOS, has seen its share of bizarre attempts, but few were as extreme or as doomed as ask. F.M's 2018 stunt, Enabled marketing move to promote their token sale, the company sent a team to Mount Everest to place a hardware wallet containing 500,000 of their Ask tokens near the summit. The idea was to symbolize the future of decentralized ambition. H-T-TPS colon slash-U2B F-Phil I-J-0-M-48, embeddable equals true but things quickly turned tragic. One of the Sherpas, native guides, involved in the climb died during the expedition, leading to widespread criticism. Ask.

FM claimed the death was unrelated, but the damage was done. The campaign was seen as reckless, tone deaf, and ultimately disrespectful. Worse, the ICO itself didn't fare much better. This story became a cautionary tale of how wild the 2017-2018 ICO boom really was. Some projects promised the Moon or the Himalayas, but delivered vaporware, poor planning, or, worse, tragedy. Always do your own research, D-Y-O-R, folks. Not every shiny new token is worth climbing a mountain for. Death of Quadrigax's founder-owned of Crypto's most gripping mysteries is the case of Quadriga CX, once-Canadish-largest crypto exchange. In 2018, its founder, Gerald Codden, reportedly died in India from Crohn's disease. Unfortunately, Cotton was the only person

with the private keys to the exchange's cold wallets, meaning $190 million in user funds vanished overnight. But here's where things get weirder. Some users didn't buy the story. There was no confirmed autopsy in Canada, and the circumstances around his death were vague. Rumors spread that Cotton had faked his death and escaped with the funds. A 2019 report by Ernst & Young showed that Cotton had used customer funds for personal trading and lavish expenses even before his death. While no definitive proof of fraud or a faked death has surfaced, trust was permanently shattered. There's a whole documentary about this, available on Netflix. H-T-TPS-C-C-W-W-W-W-W-W-W-W-W-V-V-W-V-W-T-E-W-V-W-T-E-W-T-E-E-W-T-E-E-W-T-E-E-W-T-EX-W-T-EX-T-W-E-T-W-E-T-W-E-E-T-W-E-E-T-W-E-E-E-T-W-E-W-E-E-W-E-E-W-E-E-W-E-W-E-E-W-E-E-L-E-E-L-E-W-E-E-L-L-E-L-L-E-L-L-V-L-L-L- like G-byte. Being regulated is still not a guarantee that things can't go wrong for them. Hacks

and bankruptcies are possibilities. So others prefer decentralized options like Oswap. I-O or bridges like counterstake that let you move assets without relying on centralized custody. Remember, in crypto, you are often your own bank. So choose your tools and your coins wisely. Featured vector image by macrovector, Freepig. Thank you for listening to this Hackernoon story, read by artificial intelligence. Visit hackernoon.com to read, write, learn and publish.