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Bitcoin Mining Pool ViaBTC Sells ‘Epic’ First Post-Halving Sat for $2.13M

Apr 24, 2024
    Mining pool ViaBTC won the race to mine the first satoshi after last week’s halving, which it has now sold at auction for $2.13 million.The Ordinals protocol allowed individual satoshis to be identified and traded, attaching value to particularly notable sats for the first time.
As someone who has been closely following the Bitcoin scene for years, I can tell you that the mining of the first satoshi after the latest Bitcoin halving by ViaBTC and its subsequent sale at auction for $2.13 million is a significant development in the world of cryptocurrency. This event marked the first time that individual sats, or the smallest denomination of bitcoin, were identified and traded as unique tokens, similar to non-fungible tokens (NFTs) on other networks.I recently observed an intriguing event unfold with ViaBTC, the mining pool that successfully mined the first block following Bitcoin’s halving on April 20th. The block reward, often referred to as “Satoshi,” contained in this new block was a significant one. ViaBTC chose to sell this valuable prize for an equivalent of 33.3 Bitcoins, translating to approximately $2.13 million at the current market price.

At 16:00 UTC on the cryptocurrency exchange CoinEx, an auction for satoshis, or “sats” with a worth of approximately $0.0006 each, concluded after intense competition amongst bidders in the final moments.

After the Bitcoin network experienced its fourth halving on April 20, there was great anticipation that the first block mined, or “block reward,” would generate significant attention. Some analysts even predicted that this block reward could be worth millions of dollars.

Previously in the last three halvings, there wasn’t much at stake besides the pride of mining the first block. But with the arrival of Ordinals protocol, bitcoin’s satoshis – the smallest units of bitcoin, equivalent to 0.00000001 BTC – gained unique identities and became tradable as if they were individual tokens, resembling non-fungible tokens (NFTs) on other platforms.

Casey Rodarmor, the innovator behind Ordinals, devised a method for labeling the scarcity of satoshis. These labels include “uncommon” for the initial satoshi in each block, “rare” for the one emerging following Bitcoin’s bi-monthly difficulty modification, and “epic” for the first post-Bitcoin’s quadrennial halving.

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2024-04-25 19:24