It's the fact that up until now, we still have no concrete evidence of who the creator is/are.
See? Until now, I still don't know what I will use to address Satoshi. Is it he? She? They? Them? Is? Are? Talking about pronouns, eh?

Kidding aside, this is the one that surprises me the most especially in an era where validation is pretty much becoming a norm, and popularity is becoming one of the ways for a company or whatever they have to market themselves. Satoshi remained anonymous the whole time, and Satoshi let the community spread the word of Bitcoin. With lots of information that we could get online, we still can't get concrete evidence on who Satoshi is/are, and the only thing that we can do is to speculate who really Satoshi is/are. Many documentaries have been done, people speculating who Satoshi really is/are, and a person who claims that he's Satoshi. If you know what I mean.

Survivability? As long as there's a huge community around it, it will survive. The creator being anonymous is what surprises me the most.

Having something new into the market is always amazing and it has kind of effects, big or small, long term or short term but there is one thing that has never changed: Bitcoin market cycle. Each market cycle is different than other cycles, from timelines to ROIs from bottom to ATH, ATH to ATH between two consecutive cycles for example but there is Bitcoin market cycle.

Like in January 2024, even months before that, there were effects from Bitcoin Spot ETF applications, speculations like with BlackRock participation there would be high successful approval rate this time, and actual operations and money flows from Bitcoin Spot ETFs, Bitcoin made its all time high. What happened months later, Bitcoin lost all time high, fell into a bear market while Bitcoin Spot ETFs have been still there.

$80,000 recent days and $80,000 months ago brought very different emotion in market crowd while price is the same just at different times and with different psychology in the market.

To survive for this long is an achievement on its own. 17 years is actually not too long when compared to other assets existence but it's what differentiate bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies. Bitcoin doesn't just survive for this long, it survived with growth and increasing potential. There were many other coins that along with Bitcoin but couldn't make it this far. Some of them still exist up to now but no one talk about them anymore because they are worthless. There's no point in survival if there's no more value. If you check their price history, you'll pity people that invest in them earlier years hoping it'll do well like bitcoin.

What surprised me about bitcoin is how it managed to reach this stage in the financial world while fiat existing at the same time, it was made to compete against the already established fiat system which i believe is a very brave thing and bitcoin reaching this big stage is a shocking thing. I myself would hardly believe on a new thing like BTC and no doubt i would be interested in it but I wouldnt invest in it and bitcoin going from that stage where people would hardly believe on it to having one of the top market caps in assets is a very impressive thing imo,