In an unprecedented event, Bitcoin users forked out 37.7 Bitcoin, equivalent to over $2.4 million, as fees to secure part of the much-coveted fourth Bitcoin halving block, the 840,000th. This spending spree swiftly turned the block into the most expensive one ever mined in Bitcoin’s history. On April 20, ViaBTC, the Bitcoin miner, minted this block, triggering a protocol to cut the miners’ reward by 50% — from 6.25 BTC to 3.125 BTC per block.
The meteoric rise in fees can be attributed to the surging demand to inscribe rare assets on the halving block through the recently launched Runes Protocol. Developed by Bitcoin Ordinals creator Casey Rodmarmor, Runes offers an efficient platform for creating new tokens compared to the BRC-20 token standard. Runes significantly differs from BRC-20 in its utilization of the Unspent Transaction Output (UTXO) model to “etch” new tokens on Bitcoin, contrasting the “inscription” account model employed by Ordinals.
In the aftermath of the halving, Ordinals developer Leonidas, made the assertion that the uptick in fees, thanks to the Runes’ frenzy, had offset the dip in miner rewards. Data from mempool.space reveals that a whopping $3.82 million (excluding miner subsidies) were expended on the subsequent five blocks after the halving.
In addition to the Runes rush, Bitcoin mining pools were subjected to a cut-throat competition to secure an “epic” satoshi – the first-ever smallest possible Bitcoin denomination mined on the halving block. As the crypto world went into a frenzy, investor and critic Peter Schiff wryly remarked that the halving would soon impact Bitcoin HODLers’ net worths.