 Hello, welcome to the Daily Decrypt. I'm your host Amanda and today's episode is brought to you by Dash The onset of 2016 brought a flurry of speculations How exactly did Bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies do in 2015? Bitcoin.com forums have been hot with charts and the Daily Decrypt has combed through them to bring you the best here at the top 15 Bitcoin's market cap is currently smaller than that of silver silver is smaller than the personal wealth of say Bill Gates and Bill Gates has less wealth than the net assets of say Apple and on and on through the Fed's balance sheet banknotes gold and stock markets once we've gone through the questionable wealth calculations of debt and derivatives We see Bitcoin right here tiny in the corner in the last two years The total number of Bitcoin wallets has gone from almost nil to 12 million the regions with the highest rates of increased Bitcoin usage Have been Brazil, Philippines, Indonesia, France, Bangladesh, UK, New Zealand, India, Canada and Ukraine There's been a rough doubling of Bitcoin transaction volume every year since 2012 this increase in popularity Is perhaps not surprising due to Bitcoin's predictable inflation rate what began as a 50 bitcoins per 10 minutes inflation rate is Currently 25 that will be halved once again come summer 2016 When 12.5 bitcoins per 10 minutes will be created the halving will continue every four years until 2032 when 99 percent of bitcoins will be mined how much will that be well It will be almost 21 million which is the total amount of bitcoins that will ever be mined the past couple of years have also seen an influx of Legacy financial actors who've been wondering if their business models can see a piece of blockchain action and banks aren't the only ones Venture capital firms have also been pouring money into Bitcoin related startups Exponentially so but underneath all that shiny glitter is what really makes Bitcoin work, which is its miners vast majority of bitcoins are mined by people who've come together to form pools the composition and hashing power of these pools changes from year to year and speaking of hashing power Every time bitcoins miners upgrade to better faster machines, which increases their hash rate the Bitcoin protocol Automatically adjusts the difficulty of the mathematical problems that they must solve to keep the production of new coins steady and consistent While most Bitcoin metrics have gone up over time thus far There is one that has continued to go down and that is bitcoins volatility the wild highs and lows just ain't what they used to be What does adoption look like on the street the number of Bitcoin ATMs in the world went from zero in 2013 to today's count of over 500 and the number of brick-and-mortar storefront locations Which accept Bitcoin for payment is over? 7500 will 2016 see bitcoins 2015 trends continue will another cryptocurrency perhaps become a serious competitor for the first time Leave us your speculations in the comments below Today's episode has been brought to you by Dash a currency which offers instant Confirmations via use of its masternode network It's called instant X and to show it in action this dash and drink vending machine will be debuted at the upcoming Miami Bitcoin Conference you can learn more at dash.org We're independent members of the LTB network check out our podcast there if you like and today's magic word is confirmation Bye now