Original author: Jaleel, cookie Translation: Block Rhythm
On the morning of May 23, Satoshi with the serial number 8669069 was born, which immediately aroused heated discussions in the Ordinals community. And the reason this particular Satoshi has gotten so much attention is that it’s the first Rare Satoshi inscription. The rare Satoshi of the Rare level is the first Satoshi in the difficulty adjustment period. Among the 1.9 trillion Satoshis, there are only 369 rare Satoshis of the Rare level!
It is very interesting that this rare Satoshi inscription is also inscribed with a special picture, “The Times 03/Jan/2009 Chancellor on brink of second bailout for banks.” This sentence was inscribed by Satoshi Nakamoto in the genesis block From the title of a Times of London article, also inscribed in the inscription image of the first Rare Satoshi. The rare Satoshi at the Rare level, the eye-catching serial number of 8669069, and the pictures with special meaning seem to make the rarity of this special Satoshi even higher.
Everyone is Satoshi, why am I rarer than you?
Bitcoin adopts a UTXO-based transaction model, and each transaction output has a number (index), which can be located to a specific output through the transaction hash and index. People are naturally fond of collecting, and this also applies to Bitcoin. The constituent unit of Bitcoin is Satoshi, and each Bitcoin is composed of 100 million Satoshi. Since every satoshi of Bitcoin can be traced and transferred, people are eager to hoard it. The rarity and specificity of Satoshi can be determined at the discretion of ordinal number theorists, which gives Satoshi special meaning. Whether it is a bitcoin mined by Satoshi Nakamoto, the first satoshi of a block, or a satoshi used to buy a pizza, the satoshis contained in these transactions have special significance.
The Ordinals protocol provides a unique number for Satoshi, and each Satoshi has its own Crypto identity. Such a numbering system enables Satoshi to be clearly distinguished and tracked. Bitcoin has a cyclical set of events, some frequent and some relatively infrequent, that naturally form a system of rarity. Current recurring 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 fundamental unit in the Bitcoin network, providing security and confirmation for transactions.
2. Difficulty adjustment: Every 2016 blocks, or about every two weeks, the Bitcoin network responds to changes in the hash rate by adjusting the block difficulty to ensure that the mining speed of Bitcoin remains relatively stable.
3. Halving: Every 210,000 blocks, or approximately every four years, the number of new satoshis generated in each block in the Bitcoin network will be halved. This event reduces the supply of Bitcoin, giving it scarcity and anti-inflation properties.
4. Cyclic coincidence: every six halvings, something magical will happen. The halving and difficulty adjustment will happen at the same time, forming a so-called coincidence. The period of time between conjunctions is a cycle, and a conjunction occurs approximately every 24 years. According to predictions, the first conjunction should occur sometime in 2032.
These recurring events give each Satoshi a unique identity and attributes. Based on these periodic events, the Ordinals document defines the following levels of rarity for Satoshi. At the same time, the total supply and current supply of these rarities can also be calculated based on the number of “Satoshi” dug up:
Not only rare, but interesting
In addition to rare satoshis, there exists a class of compelling “interesting satoshis”. Each Satoshi has a name, made up of the letters A through Z, which gets shorter the longer the Satoshi has been mined. They can start short and get longer, so all good, short names get stuck in unusable genesis blocks. For example, 1905530482684727 ° has the name “iaiufjszmoba”. The name of the last Satoshi mined was “a”. Every combination of 10 characters or less exists, or will someday.
Satoshi may be valued for other reasons besides name or rarity. For example due to the nature of numbers themselves, especially square roots or cube roots with whole numbers. For example the satoshi from block 477, 120 (SegWit activated block) is 2099999997689999 °, which is the last satoshi mined. Includes palindromic numbers that were once highly sought after in the ENS market. The corresponding palindromic Satoshi refers to the Satoshi that is still the same after the numbers or letters are arranged in reverse, and they present a symmetrical beauty in the arrangement of numbers and letters.
“Interesting Satoshi” has also emerged some special narratives exclusive to Bitcoin, which are related to a certain historical event of Bitcoin. In the early history of Bitcoin, there is an iconic and widely circulated story, that is, someone bought two pizzas with Bitcoin. This story happened on May 22, 2010, when the price of Bitcoin was still very low, almost negligible. At the time, a bitcoin enthusiast started a thread on a bitcoin forum asking if anyone would be willing to pay for pizza with bitcoin. He proposed that in exchange for two pizzas, the payer would receive 10,000 bitcoins.
The thread caught the attention of the community, and one eager Bitcoin holder responded to the request. He contacted a local pizzeria and arranged 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, and today that number is worth billions of dollars.
The story of this pizza transaction generated so much attention and discussion in the Bitcoin community that May 22nd became known as “Bitcoin Pizza Day” and became part of Bitcoin’s unique history. The Satoshi in this transaction is also listed as “Pizza Satoshi”. This seemingly ordinary pizza transaction has now become a landmark event in the history of Bitcoin, symbolizing the huge value growth of Bitcoin from the simple exchange when it was born to today.
Also, there are some untraded satoshis in the bitcoin world. From a regulatory standpoint, untraded Satoshi is guaranteed to be pure because it has not been involved in the black market. These satoshis appear to have been kept in Bitcoin wallets and have not been used or transferred. There are also various speculations and assumptions about these untraded satoshis. It has been suggested that they may be leftovers from early Bitcoin miners, or satoshis that have been permanently sealed due to lost passwords. These satoshis, which have never been traded, have become a mystery of the Bitcoin world, sparking curiosity and research interest.
The Silk Road incident and the Mentugo incident, which have also become part of Bitcoin history, currently have some organizations that specialize in mining rare Satoshi, and have begun to mine related Satoshi. Silk Road is a well-known black market trading platform, while the Mentugo incident refers to a bitcoin developer who lost access to his bitcoin Satoshi in the spotlight. The involvement of these early Bitcoins has triggered people’s thinking about the history and value of Bitcoin, and also promoted the in-depth exploration of Bitcoin’s development and evolution.
What other ways to expand
On May 26th, the @RareSatSociety community recorded Uncommon + Nakamoto + Block 78 + First tx + Pizza for BTC Annons, with the serial number 9164772, which caused heated discussions. The community believes that the value of rare Satoshi with multiple attributes is superimposed It’s not just as simple as doubling.
As the community with the largest stock of rare Satoshi, the Rare Satoshi Society community has also issued a “.sats” membership pass. Holders of the pass will receive exclusive access to alpha, ordinals, gifts, whitelists, and other exclusive access rights. SatsHunters, a project to find rare satoshis for individuals or projects, has released a Taproot Collection of 1138 unique images, holders of which can gain access to different features of earlier projects. At the same time, there are currently many projects deploying Tokens on Rare Satoshi.
Project Nullish is engraving rare Satoshis on the Uncommon Patterns generative art collection, 50 pieces ranked by Satoshi age, sold via PSBT (Partially Signed Bitcoin Transactions) on Gamma. These 50 uncommon patterns are all in the top 100 uncommon inscriptions in Bitcoin, and the fully on-chain renderer accounts for 51% of the under 100 uncommon inscriptions.
The Gamma auction framework is also interesting, the auctions are sold based on PSBT technology (Partially Signed Bitcoin Transactions), all prices start from 0.5 BTC and drop to 0.05 BTC within 3 days. Every 18 blocks (3 hours), the price of all collectibles still available for auction will decrease by 0.01875 BTC. Each block has an approximate duration of 10 minutes, and the auction runs until the Bitcoin Miami 2023 conference (May 18-20), which is currently over.
Meanwhile, Gamma has also recently pioneered a trustless method where users pre-sign transactions at the price point they are willing to buy, connecting the needs of collectors in a trustless Dutch auction: if a user is willing to buy at 0.1 BTC, they can pre-sign Sign the transaction and bid for 0.1 BTC. When the price of the Dutch auction drops to 0.1 BTC, the transaction will be broadcast when there are no higher bids.
The innovation brought about 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. A bidder signs a transaction that is within the auction’s markdown point, and that transaction is only valid for the specific block it anticipates. This means that the bitcoins signed by the user will not be removed from the wallet until the price falls to the bid amount.
At present, some KOLs are also planning some extended gameplay, making an NFT collection with a total amount of 100 or more, and this collection is all engraved on Uncommon-level rare Satoshi. Buy a certain amount of rare Satoshi at a group price, and bear the GAS yourself. Unlike the collection of Nullish, the design of the inscribed picture will be determined by DAO. The approximate value of the engraved rare Satoshi can refer to the floor price on Magic Eden, which is currently about 1500 U at 0.5 BTC. Although the specific value after being engraved is still uncertain, most members of the community believe that engraving a set of patterns on a rare Satoshi will be more valuable than ordinary individuals simply retaining a rare Satoshi.
In addition, the website that can check whether there is a rare Satoshi in your wallet will soon open the withdrawal and transfer function, and you may see more derivatives based on rare Satoshi in the future, creating more new ways to play.
Detailed guide for new players
As mentioned above, Project Nullish will sell rare satoshis on Uncommon Patterns generative art collections via PSBT (Partially Signed Bitcoin Transactions) on Gamma. At the same time, as shown in the picture below, Gamma has also listed a rare Satoshi collection that is engraved with a picture. New players who want to participate in rare Satoshi, want to save trouble, and just have appreciation to generate art collections can consider it.
In the query address above, you can check whether the BTC in your wallet has rare Satoshi. If you find a rare Satoshi in your wallet and want to burn or sell it, the operation steps are more troublesome. A full node is required for burning, and the sale needs to be split from the UTXO first and then add money to the newly split UTXO.
KOL999.btc has already described the rare Satoshi extraction tutorial in detail on its Twitter, and BlockBeats emphasizes some precautions here: Before officially extracting rare Satoshi, we need to prepare two receiving addresses, one for receiving rare Satoshi , and another for receiving UTXOs that do not contain rare Satoshi.
Also, it is best to use Taproot-formatted receiving addresses during all operations. Taproot is a 2021 upgrade to Bitcoin that improves security, adds some new features, and adds privacy. However, Taproot wasn’t widely adopted until Ordinals came along. Bitcoin has always been backward compatible, but sometimes when new features are added, they can only be used by wallets that integrate these upgrades. Technically, the correct term for “Taproot address” is “Bech 32 m address”, and Taproot addresses are easily identifiable by prefixing them with “bc 1”.
Of course, the probability of having rare Satoshi in the wallet is not too high. For new players who do not have rare Satoshi in their wallets, where should they go to buy unrecorded rare Satoshi? Nullish lists the price of the rare satoshi they sell on Gamma’s official market. According to the year (time stamp) and rarity, the actual circulation varies and the price also varies. As of now, the price of rare Satoshi at the Uncommon level is 0.05 BTC in 2023, 0.065 BTC in 2022, 0.1 BTC in 2013, 0.11 BTC in 2011, 0.15 BTC in 2010, and 0.3 BTC in 2009.
However, most of the rare satoshis found by Nullish are not in circulation. For example, the rare satoshis in 2009, because they are the rarest, there are not many of them in total, and many of them have not been found. Most of the rare satoshis currently on sale are from 2023, so the floor price of unburned rare satoshis is currently 0.05 BTC.
For Satoshi that is old or has not been burned, the RSSC community can currently support OTC, and users can go to the Discord of the RSSC community to find a Cofounder 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. The one who mines Bitcoin, and the only one who receives transactions directly from Satoshi Nakamoto. Block 78 was the first block ever mined by Hal, around the same time he tweeted this first tweet about Bitcoin:
Based on the information collected so far, the price of Block 78 1 satoshi was around $1 in the quotation given by someone in the RSSC Discord community in the want to sell channel. 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 a rare Satoshi, but the rare Satoshi inventory on this is not always available, and it takes a period of time to stare at it. Blockbeats reminds that Rare Satoshi’s current floor price of 0.05 BTC may be too high, and may face some potential risks. All the projects mentioned in the article do not constitute investment advice.
References for this article
Handbook of Ordinal Number Theory: https://docs.ordinals.com/introduction.html
Chinese version of Ordinal Theory Handbook: https://www.ordinalscn.org/