With Bitcoin finally completing its fourth-year halving cycle, many users are aggressively competing for halving blocks, paying exorbitant amounts of fees to mine a single block.
Bitcoin Mining Pool Pays Over $2.4 Million In Block Fees
Earlier today, the 840,000th block was added to the Bitcoin blockchain, . While the price of BTC did not witness a dramatic change following the halving, transaction fees spiked to unprecedented highs.
Amidst the massive competition, a mining pool identified as ViaBTC had successfully mined the 840,000th Bitcoin block. Cumulatively, BTC users had spent a staggering $37.7 BTC in mining fees, equivalent to $2.4 million, recording the highest fee ever paid for a Bitcoin block.
According to from mempool, after ViaBTC had produced the 840,000th block, the protocol had initiated an automated reduction of miners’ reward by half, from 6.25 BTC to 3.125 BTC per block. In addition to the fees, ViaBTC had received a total payout of 40.7 BTC, valued at approximately $2.6 million, for mining the historic block.
While it may seem that had thrown caution to the wind by spending over $2.4 million on a single block, the 840,000th block had a major significance within the cryptocurrency space. The historic is said to hold the first Satoshis, ‘sats,’ the smallest units of BTC following the halving.
There are several of these “epic sats,” that appear after the halving event, coveted as a rare collector’s item among cryptocurrency enthusiasts. Some even speculate that these could be potentially worth millions of dollars.
Including the hype surrounding these fragmented BTC, much of the competition for the Bitcoin blocks, following the halving has been attributed to the new which launched at the same time as the Bitcoin halving.
Degens Rush To Secure Infamous Rune Tokens
The Runes Protocol, created by Casey Rodamor, a Bitcoin developer, has sent shockwaves through the cryptocurrency community, as degens are avidly to etch and mint tokens directly on the Bitcoin network.
While mining pools were mining new Bitcoin blocks, degens had paid over 78.6 BTC valued at $4.95 million to the rarest . This exponential surge in fees has been an unprecedented event, highlighting the increased adoption and participation of the Bitcoin network.
According to from Ord.io, a Rune labeled as ‘Decentralized’ was acquired for a fee of 7.99 BTC, equivalent to $510,760. While another titled ‘Dog-Go-To-The-Moon’ was obtained for a fee of 6.73 BTC, worth approximately $429,831.
Leonidas, protocol developer and host of the groundbreaking , a system for numbering “epic sats,” has the Runes Protocol a remarkable success as degens have “single-handedly offset the drop in miner rewards from the halving.” He concluded that Runes have significantly impacted budget, potentially playing a major role in ensuring the network’s sustainability.
BTC price sitting at $63,700 after halving | Source: