The rarest satoshis in Bitcoin history
Last weekend was marked by the 4th Bitcoin halving, an event that occurs every 4 years consisting of halving the mining reward.
This mechanism mainly aims to reduce the quantity of new BTC issued over time, until reaching the limit set at 21 million units , thus accentuating their scarcity.
Added to this intrinsic scarcity is the theory of Ordinals , introduced by Casey Rodarmor at the beginning of 2023. This system numbers and tracks each satoshi, the smallest unit of Bitcoin, according to the order of their mining within a block .
This numbering makes it possible to trace the paths of satoshi transactions by satoshi, from their issuance to their current circulation , applying a “first in, first out” approach. Each satoshi is followed in a natural sequential order, which justifies the name “Ordinals”.
According to this theory, each satoshi has a unique number, the history of which can increase its value , thus attracting collectors of rare satoshis.
Since one BTC is divisible into 100 million satoshis, there will never be more than 2,100,000,000,000,000 satoshis created, some of which are rarer than others, listed in the following order:
- Common : All satoshis that are not the first in their block;
- Uncommon : The 1st satoshi mined in each block, appearing every 10 minutes;
- Rare : The 1st satoshi mined following an adjustment to the mining difficulty, present every 2,016 blocks, or approximately every 14 days;
- Epic : The first satoshi mined following a halving, appearing every 210,000 blocks, or approximately every 4 years;
- Legendary : The 1st satoshi mined after a cycle, which occurs approximately every 24 years.
Thus, satoshi number 1,968,750,000,000,000, mined in block number 840,000 of the 4th halving, is only the 4th epic satoshi in the history of Bitcoin .Coinbase: register on the most famous crypto exchange in the world
1 satoshi sold for $2.1 million
On April 20, 2024, satoshi number 1,968,750,000,000,000 was mined by the ViaBTC mining pool , the 3rd largest in the network with over 12% of the total hashrate.
By mining the halving block, which contained over 40 BTC in rewards and mining fees, ViaBTC also obtained an additional reward by putting this epic satoshi up for auction on the CoinEx platform.
This halving block offered the largest BTC reward since the period before the 1st halving, when rewards reached 50 Bitcoin per block, and was also the highest dollar reward in history, amounting to at $2.6 million .
Closed earlier today, the epic satoshi sale raised 33.3 BTC, or $2.133 million, bringing the total reward collected by ViaBTC to $4.733 million for a single block .Ledger: the best solution to protect your cryptocurrencies