The introduction of the Ordinals protocol has led to new use cases on the Bitcoin blockchain. One of the most recent is rare satoshis, which are increasingly becoming a favorite among collectors in the Bitcoin community.
A satoshi is the smallest available unit of Bitcoin, which is one hundredth million of a bitcoin.
Bitcoin enjoyers have established Bitcoin’s periodic events as the primary rarity factor for sats —> this is known as the Rodarmor Rarity Index.
The periodic events are:
- Blocks: A new block is mined approximately every 10 minutes from now until the end of time.
- Difficulty adjustments: Every 2016 blocks, or approximately every two weeks, the Bitcoin network responds to changes in hashrate by adjusting the difficulty target which blocks must meet to be accepted.
- Halvings: Every 210,000 blocks, or roughly every four years, the amount of new sats created in every block is cut in half.
- Cycles: Every six halvings, something magical happens: the halving and the difficulty adjustment coincide. This is called a conjunction, and the time period between conjunctions is a cycle. A conjunction occurs roughly every 24 years. The first conjunction should happen sometime in 2032.
The community has derived the below rarity levels from these events:
- common:
- Any sat that is not the first sat of its block
- uncommon:
- The first sat of each block
- rare:
- The first sat of each difficulty adjustment period
- epic:
- The first sat of each halving epoch
- legendary:
- The first sat of each cycle
- mythic:
- The first sat of the genesis block
What are exotic sats and attributes?
Satoshis may be prized for reasons other than their Rodarmor Index rarity. This might be due to:
- quality of the number itself, like Satoshis with 🦋 palindromic ID (ex: 3275431345723)
- or a connection to a historical event, such as
- 7️⃣8️⃣ satoshis from Block 78 (the second block that has satoshis circulating today, mined by Hal Finney)
- Satoshis created in the coinbase of a block mined by Satoshi Nakamoto himself
Such satoshis are termed exotic or interesting.
Which satoshis are exotic, and what makes them so is subjective! New criteria may emerge as Bitcoin culture unfolds. The list of exotic sats is not definitive!
See a complete list of rare and exotic sattributes Xverse supports HERE
See how these will be displayed in Xverse HERE