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Bitcoin fragments can become more valuable than full Bitcoins
Since January, there have been more than 10 million subscriptions to the world’s largest blockchain, and this number continues to grow exponentially.
To provide some context, the Ordinals Protocol allows for the ordered identification of satoshis, the smallest subdivision of a Bitcoin (BTC), allowing each of them to have an individual identity. From there, people can subscribe sats with arbitrary content, creating Bitcoin-native digital artifacts known as non-fungible tokens (NFTs).
Among the various stories that emerge from this technique, the existence of an extremely underground group of individuals who identify, track and trade valuable historical satoshis has come to light. They are known as ‘sat hunters’.
There is no denying that the Bitcoin ecosystem has been going through a period of massive innovation since the advent of the Ordinals Protocol in early 2023.
Their main activity is trading millions of BTC in search of satoshis that were present at historical moments in the crypto world.
This practice is known as “sat-hunting” and can be compared to continuously withdrawing money from a bank in search of rare coins: you withdraw $10,000, keep $1 worth of rare coins, deposit the remaining $9,999, and repeat the process of withdrawing another $10,000 in a continuous cycle.
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The group that owns the largest amount of rare satoshis is the Rare Satoshi Society, which has already traded over $1 billion in Bitcoin volume in pursuit of these historic satoshis.
They are becoming known for providing rare satoshis for most Ordinals experiments and have even sold a single satoshi for 0.5 BTC.
And it’s fascinating to see how some Ordinals projects take on this story. An example is the Nakamoto Whales Project, which has part of its collection minted in rare satoshis from the first thousand blocks mined, including one mined by Satoshi Nakamoto.
Besides the deployment of NFTs in rare satoshis, there is also an emerging trend of historically inscribed fungible tokens (BRC-20). DAnTer, a member of the Rare Satoshi Society, recently wrote a collection, FHAL, on a satoshi mined by the legendary Hal Finney on Block 78 with the aim of democratizing access to such a historic asset for more individuals.
According to DAnTer, we have now entered an era where one Bitcoin no longer equals one Bitcoin – and a satoshi becomes equal to infinity.
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And while the story of historical satoshis still remains underground, fungible tokens on the Bitcoin network are hotter than ever. OKX, one of the largest exchanges in the world, has just announced the listing of ORDI, the largest BRC-20 token in terms of market capitalization, while OXBT, one of the most popular BRC-20 tokens, has surpassed Bored Ape Yacht Club on the seven-day volume chart — just after launch.
In February, people were trading Ordinals using Excel spreadsheets due to the lack of infrastructure. Today, just a few months later, major stock exchanges are joining this movement. Big brands like Bugatti have expressed interest in the rare sats story and there is even discussion of smart contracts on the Bitcoin network.
Could this be the phase of the biggest innovation and onboarding in Bitcoin history?
Lugui Tillier is the chief commercial officer of Lumx Studios, a leading Web3 studio that counts BTG Pactual Bank, the largest investment bank in Latin America, among its investors. Lumx Studios has previous Web3 cases with Coca-Cola, AB InBev, Nestlé and Meta.
This article is for general information purposes and is not intended to and should not be construed as legal or investment advice. The views, thoughts and opinions expressed here are those of the author alone and do not necessarily reflect or represent the views and opinions of Cointelegraph.
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