That bitcoin was created by only one person. It was mind boggling to me how one person invented something so genius. But yea, I then realized like a week after that there's definitely a chance that it was a group rather than one singular person. But regardless even if it was created by a group, it's still surprising that a group created something that most people didn't even think the world needed.
As for bitcoin being priced a few cents in the past? It also definitely surprised me, especially the "bitcoin pizza day" event; but then immediately realized
"well duh, it started as a sort of collectible that's only being used by a few people, of course it used to be worth a few cents". Both of these are equally sort of surprising in my opinion.
Just to add just for the sake of it because I recently rewatched the Voorhees-Schiff debate, some things that surprised me concerning bitcoin but not necessarily about it's history:
- That how I didn't realize and see the flaws of the current fiat system until I've learned about bitcoin. I'm definitely not an expert on this subject(money/economics), but I'm definitely more educated now than before.
- When I realized that bitcoin can potentially dethrone gold in the store-of-value category for the masses. One main reason of which is that gold can easily be faked through filling gold bar shells with tungsten(tungsten's weight is fairly close to the weight of gold). This itself is a huge hassle.
Relevant article for this point: https://www.businessinsider.com/tungsten-filled-gold-bars-found-in-new-york-2012-9