Bitcoin’s Halving: Generating Record-Breaking Blocks, Almost As Valuable As Gold

• The mining of the first block after the introduction of Bitcoin Ordinals and the launch of the Rune protocol caused extraordinarily high fees for miners in the initial blocks of the halving.
• The most valuable block in Bitcoin’s history, however, was created due to an error.

Although Bitcoin’s halving reduced miner rewards by half, an intense competition for blockspace generated millions of dollars in payments to miners as the halving began.

In fact, except for an accidental $3 million overpayment in November, all of Bitcoin’s top 10 most valuable blocks were mined since the recent halving, as highlighted by X user Clark Moody. The first halving block alone garnered $2.6 million in fees and rewards, nearly securing the top spot, while other blocks ranged in value from $1.3 to $2 million at the time they were mined.

Unlike the overpayment, which remains Bitcoin’s most valuable block due to a miscalculation, the recent transactions following the halving were intentional efforts to secure valuable blockspace.

For example, the miner who secured the first block after the halving would claim one of four “epic sats,” or satoshis, small units of Bitcoin that contain specific inscriptions. Epic sats, created once every halving, are a hundred times rarer than “rare sats,” one of which was auctioned for over $100,000 at Sotheby’s. This particular epic sat, the first since the invention of the Bitcoin Ordinals protocol, could be the first to be auctioned or sold.

At stake were Runes, a new protocol that allows data inscription on the Bitcoin blockchain. According to Arkham, the first Rune was deployed for $430,000 as an airdrop to holders of certain Ordinals collections, with others spending hundreds of thousands more to deploy their own collections.

In total, 9 of the 10 most valuable blocks in Bitcoin’s history were mined immediately after the halving. Before this, the second most valuable Bitcoin block was due to a $500,000 “fat finger” error by Paxos. However, the mining pool involved in that transaction returned the fee.

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