26 April  2024 · Block Height 840940 · Bitcoin Price $64K

Welcome back to the Blockspace Newsletter!

Wow! That was the biggest halving block ever and for more reasons than just the fees attached.

Quick Hits

• First upwards difficulty adjustment after a halving…. ever

• 5 new BIP editors are added, and OP_CAT gets a BIP number

• Biden Admin slashes permitting timelines, accelerates grid buildout

• Runes transactions are slowing down

• Ordiscan adds Runes-flow feature

Chart of the Week

ViaBTC just raked in the most cash, ever

We all knew the Bitcoin halving block #840,000 was going to be big and boy was it ever.

In the days leading up to the most recent Bitcoin halving, everyone was speculating on just how much cheese the halving block would garner. We speculated, did some math, and were actually incredibly close (pats self on back).

We see that ViaBTC won the halving block and pocketed the now 3.125 BTC block subsidy + the whopping 37.626 BTC in fees for the block, a total of 40.751 BTC or ~$2.6 million.

But ViaBTC made more than just the $2.6 million in total block reward.

This particular block also contained the “Epic” satoshi according to Ordinal Theory & Casey Rodarmor’s proposed rarity index. There are only as many Epic satoshis as there are Halvings, so we had our fourth-ever Epic sat created with Block 840,000.

ViaBTC separated the sat and sent it to the exchange CoinEx where it sold for 33.3 BTC at auction, netting the pool another cool $2.1 million.

If we combine the 40.75 BTC from the block reward plus the 33.3 BTC from the Epic satoshi, we get a whopping 74.05 BTC, or over $4.7 million in total revenue from Block 840,000.

Previously, the title for most valuable block ever went to Block 818,087 where Antpool included a suspicious looking transaction over ~80 BTC (many suspect fat-finger or wallet hack), netting them a total $3.4 million. Even with this possible asterisk over 818,087, ViaBTC’s combined $4.7 million earns them the top total revenue earned in a single block…. ever.

The subsequent blocks after the halving were also massive. Some cursory digging and I’ve counted that 81 out of the 82 most profitable blocks in Bitcoin’s history have occurred post-halving.

Obviously this past weekend was great to be a Bitcoin miner, but fees have already declined significantly and miners are starting to feel the pain again.

Will Bitcoin survive this? Find out next week…

Links we liked

Tweet: Data Monke’s analysis on Frogs & Nodemonkes

Tweet: Beezy’s thoughts on RGB, Taproot Assets, and Runes

Blog: There is no such thing as a trustless L2

Blog: Team Slow and Steady

Blockspace Podcasts

🎙️ The $2.1 Million ‘Epic’ Bitcoin Satoshi

(YouTube) Charlie and Will go through this week’s headlines, including the $2.1 million ‘Epic Satoshi’ mined by ViaBTC during the Bitcoin halving, then auctioned off to the highest bidder.

🎙️ How the Taproot Wizards made CatVM

(YouTube) Rijndael & Tyler Whittle tell us the tale of how they wrote the CatVM storybook and how OP_CAT could fulfill the promises a lot of other Bitcoin ideas have failed to deliver.

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