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Today’s latest insights delve into the epic sale of Bitcoin’s first post-halving sat.
ViaBTC became the first mining pool to mine post-halving’s first satoshi, which they have now sold for $2.13 million in a recent auction. Anticipation rose from zero to infinity on how the first sat had the potential to attract massive interest. Some commentators said it could fetch millions of dollars given the competitive bids in the final hours of the auction.
Related: Bitcoin’s Halving Hype: A ‘Beefy’ Setup for Bullish Times Ahead
Previous Halvings Vs 2024’s Halving
The previous halvings have not had any substantial grabs apart from bragging rights for completing the first block. Meanwhile, it seems Ordinals have become the seasoning of the Bitcoin network by facilitating identification and tradeability of the satoshis, the smallest unit of BTC.
The sat that ViaBTC sold was only worth $0.00065 but ended up selling for $2.3 million BTC. $0.00065 because every one Bitcoin contains 100,000,000 million sats. This shows that some ordinals may have intrinsic collectible value and fetch beyond their standard price of $0.0065.
Casey Rodarmor introduced Ordinals in 2023 as a way of categorizing the scarcity of satoshis. For example, a sat could be epic like the first one on each block following a quadrennial halving, uncommon if it’s the first Sat of any block and rare in case it’s the first sat after Bitcoin’s adjustment of mining difficulty. Traders scan for the rarity of an ordinal using explorers like the OrdinalHub to establish whether a wallet has valuable Bitcoin assets. An epic sat is exceptionally rare and sells for the highest price in an auction.
Analytics from Mempool.Space indicates Bitcoin transaction fees significantly crashed since the halving event where the cost for high-priority transactions is at $9.32 and $8.48 for medium-priority transactions. In addition, the metric that quantifies miner earnings from a specific hash rate was reduced from $182.98 to $81 per hash/day.
More on Bitcoin Halving: What is the Bitcoin Halving and How Bitcoin’s Supply Is Limited
Miner Earnings
Miners were expecting the halving to significantly reduce their revenue with the majority hoping Casey Rodarmor’s newly released Runes Protocol would be the antidote for profitable Bitcoin mining. The protocol did launch but we are waiting on time to see how much it will contribute in terms of network activity and Bitcoin’s adoption.
More on Crypto Market:
- Samourai Wallet Creators Arrested in Money-Laundering 100 Million Scandal
- Bitcoin Halving: Interest Surge and New Shocks for Miners
Meanwhile, Bitcoin aficionados marked the halving event with the auction of the first epic sat on April 22nd, where 34 individuals submitted their bids. The auction was meant to mark community recognition, widespread adoption, and media attention for Bitcoin. The event concluded successfully with the winning bid purchasing the satoshi for $2,134,000 on CoinEx.
ViaBTC , the mining pool that successfully mined the first block post halving received a block reward of 3.125 BTC plus 37.6 BTC in reward fees, totaling $2.4 million. Bitcoin’s next halving will take place at block 1,050,000 around 2028, which will see the block reward reduce to 1.5625 BTC.
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