- Bitcoin (BTC) miners are gearing up to mine the “epic sat,” which could fetch millions of dollars.
- The ultra-rare satoshi (sat) could come from the first block generated after the halving.
Higher Stakes in the Fourth Bitcoin Halving than the Previous Ones
The Bitcoin halving happening around April 20 this year is going to be a bigger deal than the previous three that took place in 2012, 2016, and 2020. Compared to the rest, the upcoming one is now on the radar of a wider audience consisting of not only cryptocurrency traders and investors but also the mainstream media and giant financial institutions.
Stakes run higher this time because of the involvement of spot Bitcoin exchange-traded fund (ETF) issuers in Wall Street like BlackRock and Fidelity Investments as well as the new entrants from China via the Hong Kong crypto hub. What’s more, BTC miners are currently bracing themselves to mine a rare artifact within the world’s premier blockchain, in the form of an “epic sat.”
What is an Epic Sat?
In 2022, Casey Rodarmor created a method of classifying satoshis or sats, which are the smallest denominations of BTC. A sat is worth a hundred millionth of the digital currency or 0.00000001 BTC.
The creator of the Ordinals protocol developed a scale to differentiate each sat from “uncommon” up to “mythic.” Basically, the former is the first sat of each block generated in the Bitcoin blockchain. Meanwhile, “mythic” is used to categorize the first sat in the network’s first-ever block, which is presumably in the safekeeping of the enigmatic Bitcoin developer, the pseudonymous Satoshi Nakamoto.
Before the mythic class is the “epic sat,” which is the first sat obtained in the first block made every Bitcoin halving. Only three of them exist to this day and the next halving will mean the birth of the fourth one.
Tristan, the co-founder of Ordiscan, estimates the fourth epic sat could be worth around $50 million. The value of the first three units remains a mystery as he claims that none of them have been sold yet.
It’s worth noting that the floor price of an uncommon sat sits at $400 in Magic Eden. On top of that is a “rare sat” mined right off the start of each mining difficulty adjustment, which sold for over $100K at a recent Sotheby’s auction.
The Bitcoin Halving
With only 649 blocks to go until the 840,000th block height of Bitcoin as of this writing at 3:00 PM UTC on Monday, the fourth halving will likely arrive by April 20.
This year’s halving is set to cut Bitcoin mining reward from the current 6.25 BTC per block to 3.125 BTC. Considering the broader adoption of Bitcoin nowadays, especially by institutional players, this event is forecasted to trigger an all-new level of scarcity for BTC, which could propel its price to new heights. Some analysts are even eyeing $100K to $200K for each unit of the world’s largest cryptocurrency by market cap in 2025.
The arrival of the epic sat in the mix only adds more flavor to the incoming Bitcoin halving party.