Detailed explanation of the historical value of rare satoshis and scalable gameplay in the next wave of hype narrative after BRC20

Author: Jaleel ,cookie
Editor: Jack
Source: BlockBeats
On the morning of May 23, the Satoshi 8669069 was released, which immediately caused a heated discussion in the Ordinals community. The reason why this particular Satoshi received so much attention is that it is the first Rare Satoshi inscription. Rare Satoshi is the first Satoshi in the difficulty adjustment period. There are only 369 Rare Satoshis out of 1.9 trillion Satoshis!
Interestingly, the inscription on the rare coin also has a special picture, "The Times 03/Jan/2009 Chancellor on brink of second bailout for banks." This sentence from a London Times article title that was inscribed in the Genesis Block by Satoshi Nakamoto is also inscribed in the inscription picture of the first Rare-level rare coin. The Rare-level rare coin, with the eye-catching serial number 8669069 and the special picture, seems to make this special coin even more rare.
We are all smart, why am I rarer than you?
Bitcoin uses a UTXO-based transaction model, where each transaction output has an index, and a specific output can be located through the transaction hash and index. People are naturally fond of collecting, and this also applies to Bitcoin. The unit of Bitcoin is Satoshi, and each Bitcoin is composed of 100 million Satoshi. Since each Satoshi of Bitcoin can be tracked and transferred, people are eager to collect it. The scarcity and uniqueness of Satoshi can be determined by ordinal theorists, which gives Satoshi special meaning. Whether it is the Bitcoin mined by Satoshi Nakamoto, the first Satoshi of a block, or the Satoshi used to buy pizza, the Satoshi contained in these transactions have special meaning.
The Ordinals protocol provides unique numbers for Satoshis, each with its own digital identifier. This numbering system allows Satoshis to be clearly distinguished and tracked. Bitcoin has a series of periodic events, some of which occur frequently and some of which are relatively uncommon, which naturally form a rare system. The current periodic events are:
1. Block mining: From now until the end of time, a new block will be mined approximately every 10 minutes. This periodic event is the basic unit in the Bitcoin network, providing security and confirmation for transactions.
2. Difficulty Adjustment: Every 2016 blocks, or approximately every two weeks, the Bitcoin network responds to changes in hash rate by adjusting block difficulty to ensure that Bitcoin mining speed remains relatively stable.
3. Halving: Every 210,000 blocks, or approximately every four years, the number of new Satoshis generated per block in the Bitcoin network is halved. This event reduces the supply of Bitcoin, making it scarce and inflation-resistant.
4. Cyclic Coincidence: After every six halvings, something magical happens. Halving and difficulty adjustment occur simultaneously, forming what is called a coincidence. The time period between coincidences is a cycle, and a coincidence occurs approximately every 24 years. It is predicted that the first coincidence should occur sometime in 2032.
These periodic events give each Satoshi a unique identity and attributes. Based on these periodic events, the Ordinals document defines the following levels of Satoshi rarity. At the same time, the total supply and current supply of these rarities can also be calculated based on the number of Satoshi mined:
Not only rare, but also interesting
In addition to rare satoshis, there exists a class of notable "interesting satoshis." Each satoshi has a name, made up of the letters A through Z, with names getting shorter the longer a satoshi is mined. They can start short and then get longer, so all the good, short names get stuck in the genesis block and cannot be used. For example, the name of 1905530482684727° is "iaiufjszmoba." The name of the last satoshi to be mined was "a." Every combination of 10 characters or less exists, or will one day exist.
Satoshis may be valued for reasons other than name or rarity. For example, due to the properties of numbers themselves, especially those with square or cube roots of integers. For example, the satoshi from block 477,120 (the block where SegWit was activated) is 2099999997689999°, which was the last satoshi to be mined. This includes palindromic numbers that were popular in the past ENS market. Palindromic satoshis are satoshis that are still the same when numbers or letters are arranged forwards or backwards, and they show symmetry in the arrangement of numbers and letters.
"Quyoucong" has also emerged some special narratives that are exclusive to Bitcoin and are related to a certain historical event of Bitcoin. In the early history of Bitcoin, there is an iconic story that has been widely circulated, that is, someone bought two pizzas with Bitcoin. This story happened on May 22, 2010, when the price of Bitcoin was still very low and almost negligible. At that time, a Bitcoin enthusiast started a post on the Bitcoin forum, asking if anyone was willing to buy pizza with Bitcoin. He proposed that in exchange for two pizzas, the payer would receive 10,000 Bitcoins.
The post attracted the attention of the community, and an enthusiastic Bitcoin holder responded to the request. He contacted a local pizza shop and arranged a transaction to pay 10,000 Bitcoins. This transaction became the first real transaction in the history of Bitcoin, also known as Bitcoin's "pizza transaction". 10,000 Bitcoins were worth almost a few dollars, but today, this number of Bitcoins is worth billions of dollars.
The story of this pizza transaction has attracted widespread attention and discussion in the Bitcoin community, and May 22 is therefore called "Bitcoin Pizza Day", becoming part of Bitcoin's unique history. The Satoshi in this transaction are also listed as "Pizza Satoshi". This seemingly ordinary pizza transaction has now become a landmark event in Bitcoin history, symbolizing the huge value growth of Bitcoin from a simple exchange at its birth to today.
In addition, there are some untraded Satoshis in the Bitcoin world. From a regulatory perspective, the purity of untraded Satoshis is guaranteed because they have never been involved in the black market. These Satoshis seem to have been kept in Bitcoin wallets and have not been used or transferred. There are various speculations and assumptions about these untraded Satoshis. Some people think that they may be the remains of early Bitcoin miners, or Satoshis that have been permanently sealed due to the loss of passwords. These Satoshis that have never been traded have become a mystery in the Bitcoin world, sparking people's curiosity and research interest.
The Silk Road and Mentugo incidents, which are also part of Bitcoin history, have also seen some organizations that specialize in mining rare Satoshis begin to mine Satoshis related to them. The Silk Road is a well-known black market trading platform, while the Mentugo incident refers to a Bitcoin developer who lost access to his own Bitcoin Satoshis and attracted much attention. These early Bitcoin involvements have sparked people's thinking about the history and value of Bitcoin, and have also promoted in-depth exploration of the development and evolution of Bitcoin.
What other expandable gameplays are there?
On May 26, the @RareSatSociety community burned rare satoshis with five attributes of Uncommon + Nakamoto + Block 78 + First tx + Pizza for BTC Annons. The serial number was 9164772, which caused heated discussions. The community believed that the value of rare satoshis with multiple attributes was more than just doubled.
As the community with the largest stock of rare satoshis, the Rare Satoshi Society has also released a ".sats" membership pass. Holders of the pass will receive exclusive access to gifts, whitelists, and other well-known people in the fields of Alpha and Ordinals. SatsHunters, a project that seeks rare satoshis for individuals or projects, has released a Taproot Collection of 1,138 unique images, and holders can gain access to different features of early projects. At the same time, there are many projects that currently deploy tokens on rare satoshis.
Project Nullish is creating an art collection of rare Satoshis inscribed with Uncommon Patterns, 50 pieces arranged by Satoshi age, sold via PSBT (Partially Signed Bitcoin Transactions) on Gamma. All 50 uncommon patterns are in the top 100 uncommon inscriptions on Bitcoin, along with fully on-chain renders, accounting for 51% of the uncommon inscriptions under 100.
The Gamma auction framework is also interesting. The auction is sold based on PSBT technology (partially signed Bitcoin transactions). All prices start at 0.5 BTC and drop to 0.05 BTC within 3 days. Every 18 blocks (3 hours), the price of all collectibles that are still available for auction will drop by 0.01875 BTC. The approximate time for each block is 10 minutes. The auction lasted until the 2023 Bitcoin Miami Conference (May 18-20), and has now ended.
Meanwhile, Gamma has recently pioneered a trustless method where users pre-sign transactions at the price point they are willing to buy, connecting collectors’ needs in a trustless Dutch auction: if a user is willing to buy at 0.1 BTC, they can pre-sign a transaction and bid at 0.1 BTC. When the price of the Dutch auction drops to 0.1 BTC, the transaction will be broadcast if there are no higher bids.
The innovation brought by Gamma allows users to set a bid at a specific price and come back later to see if they are still the highest bidder. The bidder signs a transaction within the auction's price drop points, and the transaction is only valid in the specific block it is expected to be in. This means that the Bitcoin signed by the user will not be moved from the wallet until the price drops to the bid amount.
At present, some KOLs are also planning some extended gameplay, making a collection of NFTs with a total of 100 or more, and all of this collection is engraved on Uncommon-level rare satoshis. You can purchase a certain number of rare satoshis at a group purchase price and bear the GAS yourself. Unlike the collection of Nullish, the engraved picture design will be determined by DAO. The approximate value of the engraved rare satoshis can refer to the floor price on Magic Eden, which is currently about 1500U at 0.5BTC. Although the specific value after engraving cannot be determined, most members of the community believe that engraving a set of pictures on rare satoshis will be more valuable than simply keeping one rare satoshi for an ordinary individual.
In addition, sating.io, a website that allows users to check whether they have rare satoshis in their wallets, has also enabled the withdrawal and transfer function. In the future, we may see more derivatives based on rare satoshis, creating more new ways to play.
Detailed guide for new players
As mentioned above, the Nullish project sells rare satoshis engraved with Uncommon Patterns Generative Art Collections through PSBT (Partially Signed Bitcoin Transactions) on Gamma. At the same time, as shown in the figure below, Gamma has also listed a collection of rare satoshis engraved with pictures. New players who want to participate in rare satoshis, want to save trouble, and happen to appreciate the generative art collection can consider it.
In the query address above, you can check whether there are rare satoshis in your BTC wallet. If you find rare satoshis in your wallet and want to burn or sell them, the operation steps are complicated. You need to use a full node when burning, and you need to split them from UTXO and then add money to the newly split UTXO when selling.
KOL 999.btc has described the tutorial on extracting rare satoshis in detail on his Twitter. BlockBeats would like to emphasize some more precautions here: Before officially extracting rare satoshis, we need to prepare two receiving addresses, one for receiving UTXOs containing rare satoshis, and the other for receiving UTXOs without rare satoshis.
In addition, it is best to use receiving addresses in Taproot format during all operations. Taproot is a 2021 upgrade to Bitcoin that improves security, adds some new features, and increases privacy. However, Taproot was not widely adopted until Ordinals appeared. Bitcoin is always backwards compatible, but sometimes when new features are added, only wallets that integrate these upgrades can use them. Technically, the correct term for "Taproot address" is "Bech32m address", and Taproot addresses are easily recognizable with the prefix starting with "bc1".
Of course, the chance of having rare satoshis in your wallet is not too high. For new players who don't have rare satoshis in their wallets, where should they buy unburned rare satoshis? Nullish lists the prices of rare satoshis they sell on the official market of Gamma. The actual circulation varies according to the year (timestamp) and rarity. As of now, the price of Uncommon-level rare satoshis in 2023 is 0.05BTC, 0.065BTC in 2022, 0.1BTC in 2013, 0.11BTC in 2011, 0.15BTC in 2010, and 0.3BTC in 2009.
However, most of the rare Satoshis found by Nullish are not circulated for sale, such as the rare Satoshis from 2009, because they are the rarest, and there are not many of them, and many of them can no longer be found. Most of the rare Satoshis currently on sale are from 2023, so the floor price of unburned rare Satoshis is currently 0.05BTC.
For Satoshi coins that are very old or have not been burned, the RSSC community can currently support OTC, and users can go to the RSSC community’s Discord to find the Cofounder for guarantee.
Block 78, which has been very popular in the past week or two, is the first block mined by someone other than Satoshi Nakamoto. It originally belonged to the late cypherpunk Hal Finney, who was the first person to start mining Bitcoin other than Satoshi Nakamoto and the only person to receive transactions directly from Satoshi Nakamoto. Block 78 is the first block ever mined by Hal, and around the same time, he posted this first tweet about Bitcoin on Twitter:
According to the information collected so far, someone in the RSSC Discord community previously quoted a price of about $1 for 1 satoshi in the want to sell channel in Block 78. In addition, if you want to engrave a picture on a rare satoshi, you can use the Ordinalsbot tool to directly choose to engrave the picture on the rare satoshi, but the rare satoshi inventory on it is not always available, so you need to keep an eye on it for a while. Blockbeats reminds that the current floor price of 0.05BTC for rare satoshis may be too high, and there may be some potential risks. All the projects mentioned in the article do not constitute investment advice.
References for this article
Handbook of Ordinal Theory: https://docs.ordinals.com/introduction.html
Chinese version of Handbook of Ordinal Theory: https://www.ordinalscn.org/