Bitcoin has made the cut. In a big one for the history books, Bitcoin and a number of other crypto-related events have officially been added to the 2023 edition of the iconic Guinness World Records book.
All the new records featuring crypto assets appear under the category ‘Cryptomania’ with a number of blockchain-related happenings appearing in various online entries.
Predictably, Bitcoin (BTC) was officially recognised as the “first decentralised cryptocurrency” as well as racking up the title of the “oldest” and “most valuable”.
“Bitcoin was developed as a solution to the challenge of regulating a digital currency without any centralised organisation,” reads the online entry, noting that there had been attempts before BTC but all had fallen short.
Bitcoin: The details
The record keepers certainly aren’t wrong here, with Bitcoin first emerging in 2009 when its pseudonymous founder Satoshi Nakamoto created the world’s first trustless, decentralised currency for peer-to-peer payments. As he noted in the whitepaper:
“The root problem with conventional currency is all the trust that’s required to make it work. The central bank must be trusted not to debase the currency, but the history of fiat currencies is full of breaches of that trust.”
Since its inception, the flagship cryptocurrency has maintained a substantial lead over all other cryptocurrencies when looking at it in terms of market cap, currently commanding a market capitalisation of US$370 billion.
While tens of thousands of other altcoins have emerged over time, Bitcoin continues to dominate over 40% of the market share.
At the time of writing Bitcoin (BTC) is changing hands for US$19,286, seemingly pinned to its fabled US$20k support line.
El Salvador also shared some of the Bitcoin-related limelight, receiving recognition for being the first nation-state to adopt Bitcoin as legal tender.
Non fungible records
Interestingly, the team at Guinness gave the title of “First NFT” to the first and only non-fungible token ever minted on the Bitcoin network, via the now-forked Namecoin blockchain.
The NFT, titled ‘Quantum’, is a short looping animation created by American digital artist Kevin McCoy. The NFT is currently owned by pseudonymous Twitter user ‘Sillytuna’ who purchased it at a Sotheby’s auction for US$1.4 million.
One of the most notable NFT projects, CryptoPunks, also made the record books, taking the title of the “most expensive NFT collectible” following the sale of CryptoPunk #5822 was for 8,000 ETH (US$23.7 million) on February 12 this year.
It’s been an undeniably big week for the record books, with Binance revealing in a blog post that they too had in fact broken a Guiness World Record for hosting the “world’s largest crypto class” which saw 289 students rock up to Blockchain Land in Nuevo León, Mexico.
The growing recognition of the crypto ecosystem by the renowned Guinness World Records is further evidence of the public’s growing fascination with and adoption of digital assets. In light of this, we’ll leave you with some content from Guinness World Records who remarkably, happen to have extremely strong game on Twitter.
