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The first satoshi mined on the Bitcoin blockchain after last week’s halving event, mined by Bitcoin mining pool ViaBTC, went up for auction—and fetched a sizable seven-figure sum.
The auction of “epic sat” 1,968,750,000,000,000, hosted on the cryptocurrency exchange CoinEX, ended Thursday with a final bid of 33.3 Bitcoin ($2.13 million worth) winning the piece of Bitcoin history. It's not yet clear who won the auction.
The auction of the Epic Sat began on April 20, the day after the halving, with a starting bid of 1 BTC, around $63,310. On Thursday, in the final minutes of the auction, the winning bid jumped multiple times from 18 BTC to 20 BTC, and finally the winning figure of 33.3 BTC.
A satoshi is the smallest denomination of Bitcoin, representing 1/100,000,000 of a single coin. Satoshis are awarded rarity levels based on varying factors, and the first satoshi mined after the quadrennial halving event—during which the BTC reward for miners is cut in half—is called an “epic sat.” There are now only four epic sats ever mined to date.
“CoinEx's partner, the ViaBTC mining pool, has officially mined the 840,000th block,” CoinEx wrote on the auction post. “This milestone not only signifies Bitcoin's fourth halving but also includes a block identified as an epic ‘Rare Satoshi' by the Ordinals numbering system.”
“The general public has a keen interest in collecting valuable items. Given that satoshis are assigned unique identifiers, they inherently possess higher collectible value,” CoinEx wrote. “As periodic events occur within the Bitcoin network, some more frequently than others, scarcity is naturally promoted.”
ViaBTC did not immediately respond to Decrypt’s request for comment.
In addition to the value of being one of the first satoshis after the halving, inscribing or etching on one of these sats potentially brings added value to collectors of Bitcoin Runes tokens and NFT-like Ordinals inscriptions, potentially valued in the millions of dollars overall.
“It’s thought that an Ordinals project that can successfully purchase that satoshi and inscribe an Ordinal on it would have a significant market premium because of the underlying satoshi’s rarity,” Blockspace Media co-founder Will Foxley previously told Decrypt.
Edited by Andrew Hayward
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