ViaBTC, the world‘s third-largest mining pool, is initiating an auction for the “epic sat” it uncovered during Bitcoin’s fourth halving event on April 20.
In an April 23 announcement, ViaBTC disclosed that the auction is underway on the CoinEx crypto exchange and is slated to conclude by April 26. The statement reads:
“The auction for Sat 1,968,750,000,000,000 — 1 of only 4 epic sats in the Bitcoin ecosystem — has officially begun!”
“Epic sat” refers to the initial satoshi generated following each halving event, occurring approximately every four years after 210,000 blocks. With just 32 epic sats expected to exist, these units carry exceptional significance within the Bitcoin network.
CoinEx said bidding for this rare asset would be in Bitcoin, with a minimum bid of 1 BTC. According to the auction page, the highest bid for the asset is 2 BTC, approximately $132,000, as of press time.
Notably, Foundry USA, the largest BTC mining pool, had intended to capitalize on the scarcity of “epic sats” before the halving. The company assured its customers that it would make diligent efforts to monetize the halving block and distribute 100% of the proceeds to pool members.
However, ViaBTC was the lucky pool to mine the block, so it was unclear whether the firm plans to redistribute the auction profits entirely to miners.
Halving block rewards isolated
Meanwhile, ViaBTC isolated the rewards from mining the fourth halving block and temporarily suspended payouts to miners.
On April 20, the pool earned 40.75 BTC, equating to $2.6 million, for successfully mining the halving block that reduced miners rewards from 6.25 BTC to 3.125 BTC. Notably, 37.6 BTC of this reward pertained to validating transactions within the Runes protocol.
As per on-chain data, ViaBTC transferred the total reward of 40.75 BTC to a newly generated address.
Following these actions, several users of the pool raised inquiries about the absence of BTC payout records for the halving block on their dashboard by April 21. In response, a ViaBTC representative reassured users that the rewards were undergoing processing and would be completed promptly.