The Weekly Stack: Understanding special sats ✨
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Understanding special sats ✨
The Bitcoin world often talks about sats, but what are they? Think of sats as the cents to Bitcoin's dollar. While a dollar divides into 100 cents, a Bitcoin subdivides into 100 million Satoshis, abbreviated as sats. These are digital subunits that live on the Bitcoin blockchain. With the emergence of Ordinal Theory, not all sats are created equal; some have a distinct rarity, making them "special." Let's explore what this means for Bitcoin and Ordinal inscriptions.
Bitcoin operates on a decentralized blockchain system, utilizing a continuously growing list of records called blocks that each contains a record of transactions. Approximately every four years, or technically, every 210,000 blocks, the reward given to miners for validating and adding new transactions to the blockchain is reduced by half. This event is known as a "halving" and is a mechanism to control the supply and introduction of new Bitcoins into the system, ensuring that the total number of Bitcoins in circulation never exceeds 21 million. Halvings can have significant economic implications for Bitcoin, influencing demand, supply, and price.
Many refer to Bitcoin as the "timechain" due to these structured events. Named in honor of Casey Rodarmor, the developer behind Ordinal Theory, the Rodarmor Rarity Index categorizes sats by their position in blockchain events, leading to various levels of rarity:
Common sats: Not in the initial position of their blocks.
Uncommon sats: The first sat of each block.
Rare sats: The first sat in each difficulty adjustment.
Epic sats: The first sat of every halving.
Legendary sats: The first sat of every cycle.
Mythic sats: The very first sat, residing in the genesis block.
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Exclusive alpha 👀
Thanks for tuning into our weekly newsletter! If you’ve made it this far, here’s some exclusive alpha…we’ll be releasing an exciting new feature on Gamma soon that will bring the fun of collecting back to on-chain Bitcoin NFTs in a novel and accessible way. Think: Discover ordinals from new artists on Bitcoin for less than $20. Stay tuned for more announcements in the next few weeks.
We’re beyond excited for what’s to come. See you next week!