Bitcoin finally makes its Guinness World Records debut
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(Kitco News) – The world of cryptocurrencies has now been recognized by Guinness World Records (GWR), which added Bitcoin to its new “Cryptomania” category, recognizing the top crypto as the first decentralized currency.
GWR has been cataloging record-breaking feats and achievements since 1955, and 2022 marked the first time developments in the crypto sector entered the record books. Their induction follows several years of a more prominent public profile for the crypto industry, which saw new record high prices in 2021.
Several other notable blockchain achievements have also been added, including crypto adoption, fan tokens, and nonfungible tokens (NFTs).
Along with being recognized as the first decentralized currency, Bitcoin was also recognized as the most valuable cryptocurrency due to its market cap of $816.69 billion, which was recorded on March 24, 2022.
“Bitcoin was developed as a solution to the challenge of regulating a digital currency without any centralized organization, or ‘trusted third party,’ to monitor transactions,” the description page says, noting that previous attempts to create such a currency “still required a trusted third party (acting as a bank) to make sure people didn’t “double money”.
GWR recognized Satoshi Nakamoto as the pseudonymous creator of Bitcoin and traced the origins of the digital currency to the online community “Cypherpunks”, a collective that brought together crypto enthusiasts, libertarians and software developers, including Satoshi Nakamoto.
“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.”
Nonfungible token (NFT) project CryptoPunks was also recognized by GWR to be the most “expensive NFT collectible” after CryptoPunk #5822 was purchased for $23.7 million, or 8,000 Ether on February 12 of this year by founder Deepak Thapliya.
Fan tokens also debuted as a category in the book, with Manchester City’s token recorded as the “most valuable fan token” with a market value of $47.1 million as of March 24, 2022.
El Salvador was also recognized for being the “first country to adopt Bitcoin as legal tender” last June.
This latest development marks a growing trend of public recognition of progress in the cryptocurrency sector.
Last week, the top global crypto exchange Binance announced that it had broken a Guinness World Record after it was recognized for conducting the largest crypto lesson to date, with 289 people in attendance at Blockchain Land Nuevo León on October 7.
And in early September, the Merriam-Webster dictionary added the words “altcoin” and “metaverse” to its reference pages. “Bitcoin” was previously added in 2016, while “cryptocurrency”, “initial coin offering” and “blockchain” we included in 2018.
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