Bitcoin users spent a staggering 37.7 Bitcoins (BTC) in fees – worth just over $2.4 million at current prices – to get their share of limited space on the fourth Bitcoin halving block.
On April 20 at 00:09 UTC, Bitcoin miner ViaBTC produced the 840,000th block, triggering the automated protocol that reduces the miner’s rewards by 50%, from 6.25 BTC to 3.125 BTC per block.
Block 840,000 quickly became the most sought-after digital real estate in Bitcoin history, with users losing a total of 37.67 BTC in fees, according to data from Bitcoin block explorer mempool.space.
Including the miner subsidy of 3,125 BTC, a total of 40.7 BTC – worth $2.6 million – was paid to Bitcoin miner ViaBTC for producing the halving block.
The record fees were assigned to the degens racing to inscribe and burn rare satoshis on the halving block – much of the activity coming from a frenzy of activity on the new Runes protocol from Bitcoin Ordinals creator Casey Rodmarmor, who was posted online at the same time as the halving.
The runes were commercialized as a more efficient way to create new tokens on the Bitcoin network compared to the BRC-20 token standard – an ordinal-based method for creating Bitcoin-based tokens.
Just like BRC-20s, Runes leverages the Bitcoin network and pays fees in Bitcoin to create new tokens. But the similarities end there. The main difference between Runes and BRC-20 is that Runes uses an Unspent Transaction Output (UTXO) model to “burn” new tokens onto Bitcoin. This contrasts with the “registration” account model used by Ordinals, according to a protocol explainer from Rodarmor.
In an April 20 post on X, pseudonymous Ordinals developer Leonidas claimed that fees on the five most recent Bitcoin blocks after block 840,000 had exceeded the Coinbase reward.
“The degen runes alone made up for the drop in miner rewards following the halving,” Leonidas wrote.
A total of $3.82 million in fees – excluding grants to miners – were spent across the five blocks after the halving, according to aggregated data from mempool.space.
Related: Bitcoin Halving by 2024: How to Maintain BTC Mining Efficiency as Rewards Diminish
Aside from the battle to inscribe one of the first runes, Bitcoin mining pools were also vying to grab what is known as an “epic” satoshi. An epic satoshi is the very first satoshi – the smallest possible denomination of Bitcoin – mined on the halved block.
On April 15, Trevor Owens, Managing Partner of the Bitcoin Frontier Fund wrote that he was willing to offer a bounty of between $500,000 and $1 million to “buy back” the first Bitcoin block.
Crypto X Reacts to Bitcoin Halving
Amid the chaos, pseudonymous trader Hsaka posted a meme that summed up much of the general sentiment toward the halving event: a brief moment of celebration followed by an immediate return to business as usual. habit.
Peter Schiff, an outspoken critic of Bitcoin, has also turned to throw some shade on Bitcoiners amid the halving event.
“I think halving is an apt name for what happens as soon as Bitcoin HODLers experience a halving of their net worth,” Schiff said.
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News Source : cointelegraph.com
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