Watch Apple’s market cap hit $2 trillion in this NASDAQ bar chart race-Computerfanfield

Apple became the first US company reach a market value of $2 trillion on Wednesday, a number that’s doubled since 2018.

Hard Fork figured we’d celebrate Apple’s milestone by demonstrating its dominance, not just in 2020, but over the past half-decade too.

And considering how painfully cliché Apple has become, what with its penchant for dongles and lust for peddling iPhones without chargers , we figured a bar chart race would suit perfectly.

So, click play on the visualization below and observe Apple’s market value triple in just five years, leaving the rest of the NASDAQ 100 in the dirt.

(NB: If it doesn’t load automatically, try refreshing this page in your browsers “Desktop Mode.”)

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So, now that Apple’s officially in the double-trill club, one big question remains: Who’s next, Microsoft or Amazon?

Fujitsu apologizes after Tokyo Stock Exchange suffers worst ‘crash’ in history

The Tokyo Stock Exchange (TSE) suffered its worst service outage ever on Thursday when a technical glitch sent its entire system offline for the entire day.

The exchange said a hardware fault discovered at around 7am local time eventually led to system-wide failure after backup infrastructure failed to boot, reports The Financial Times .

TSE is the third largest stock exchange in the world, supporting trade for more than 3,000 stocks. Brokerages are reportedly still accepting customer requests but cannot promise trades will actually be put through.

“We apologize for any inconvenience caused to the concerned parties because of a failure in the hardware we delivered,” said a Fujitsu spokesperson, according to Bloomberg .

Japanese IT giant Fujitsu helped develop TSE’s Arrowhead system, but while the company has apologized for the outage, a TSE spokesperson maintained it was fully responsible for the downtime as market operator. The exchange has asked Fujitsu to help investigate the matter, but won’t seek compensation.

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A raft of other exchanges operated by the TSE’s parent company, Japan Exchange Group, were also hit. The FT found bourses in Nagoya, Fukuoka, and Sapporo — which use the same Fujitsu tech — affected in the same way as the TSE.

As dev teams piece together exactly what happened, it’s worth noting that Arrowhead reportedly survived the earthquake and subsequent tsunami that hit Japan back in 2011, but technical glitches have rendered it unusable on two occasions since it was deployed in 2010.

So you’re interested in tech? Then join our online event, TNW2020 , where you’ll hear how technology is transforming industries and businesses.

Satoshi Nakaboto: ‘Twitter hacker who owns 300 Bitcoins has bail set for $725K’

Our robot colleague Satoshi Nakaboto writes about Bitcoin every fucking day.

Welcome to another edition of Bitcoin Today, where I, Satoshi Nakaboto, tell you what’s been going on with Bitcoin in the past 24 hours. As Marx used to say: Shleppppppp it!

Bitcoin price

We closed the day, August 03 2020, at a price of $11,246. That’s a minor 1.83 percent increase in 24 hours, or $202. It was the highest closing price in one day.

We’re still 44 percent below Bitcoin‘s all-time high of $20,089 (December 17 2017).

Bitcoin market cap

Bitcoin‘s market cap ended the day at $207,503,423,456. It now commands 61 percent of the total crypto market.

Bitcoin volume

Yesterday’s volume of $20,271,713,443 was the lowest in eight days, 10 percent below last year’s average, and 72 percent below last year’s high. That means that yesterday, the Bitcoin network shifted the equivalent of 319 tons of gold.

Bitcoin transactions

A total of 333,591 transactions were conducted yesterday, which is 4 percent above last year’s average and 26 percent below last year’s high.

Bitcoin transaction fee

Yesterday’s average transaction fee concerned $2.39. That’s $1.51 below last year’s high of $3.91.

Bitcoin distribution by address

As of now, there are 18,432 Bitcoin millionaires, or addresses containing more than $1 million worth of Bitcoin.

Furthermore, the top 10 Bitcoin addresses house 5.0 percent of the total supply, the top 100 14.3 percent, and the top 1000 34.8 percent.

Company with a market cap closest to Bitcoin

With a market capitalization of $208 billion, Merck & Co has a market capitalization most similar to that of Bitcoin at the moment.

Bitcoin’s path towards $1 million

On November 29 2017 notorious Bitcoin evangelist John McAfee predicted that Bitcoin would reach a price of $1 million by the end of 2020.

He even promised to eat his own dick if it doesn’t. Unfortunately for him it’s 97.7 percent behind being on track. Bitcoin‘s price should have been $484,619 by now, according to dickline.info.

Bitcoin energy consumption

On a yearly basis Bitcoin now uses an estimated 63 terawatt hour of electricity. That’s the equivalent of Switzerland’s energy consumption.

Bitcoin on Twitter

Yesterday 29,874 fresh tweets about Bitcoin were sent out into the world. That’s 48.8 percent above last year’s average. The maximum amount of tweets per day last year about Bitcoin was 82,838.