比特币减半：为什么这次可能会有所不同

比特币第四次减半即将到来，这一次可能会带来一些非常有趣的惊喜。

此次减半标志着比特币供应补贴从每块 6.25 BTC 减少到每块 3.125 BTC。

这些供应减少每 210,000 个区块或大约每四年发生一次，作为比特币逐步、通货紧缩的方法的一部分，以达到其最终流通供应上限。

2100 万枚比特币的有限供应即使不是比特币的基本特征，也是

随着时间的推移，减半是比特币长期激励措施最根本转变之一背后的驱动力：矿工从由来自 Coinbase 补贴的新发行代币（区块奖励）资助转向主要由交易费收入资助来自用户在链上转移比特币。

正如中本聪在白皮书第 6 节（激励）中所说：

“该激励措施也可以通过交易费来资助。

如果交易的输出值小于其输入值，则差额就是交易费用，该费用将添加到包含该交易的区块的激励值中。

一旦预定数量的代币进入流通，激励措施就可以完全转变为交易费用，并且完全不受通货膨胀影响。”

从历史上看，减半与比特币价格大幅升值相关，抵消了矿工补贴减半的影响。

矿工的账单以法定货币支付，这意味着如果比特币价格升值，导致每个区块赚取的比特币数量减少，而以美元计算的收入增加，那么对采矿作业的负面影响就会得到缓冲。

鉴于上一个市场周期，即使比之前的历史高点升值还不到 4 倍，价格升值将在多大程度上缓冲矿商免受减半的影响，这一假设可能并不总是成立。

即将到来的减半，比特币的通胀率将首次降至1%以下。

如果下一个市场周期的表现与上一个市场周期类似，且上涨幅度远低于历史水平，那么减半可能会对现有矿商产生重大负面影响。

This makes the fee revenue miners can collect from transactions more important than ever, and it will continue to become more central to their sustainability from a business perspective as block height increases and successive halvings occur. Either fee revenue has to increase, or the price needs to appreciate at a minimum by 2x each halving in order to make up for the decrease in subsidy revenue. As bullish as most Bitcoiners can be, the notion that a doubling in price is guaranteed to happen every four years, in perpetuity, is a dubious assumption at best.

Love them or hate them, BRC-20 tokens and Inscriptions have shifted the entire dynamic of the mempool, pushing fees from somewhere in the ballpark of 0.1-0.2 BTC per block prior to their existence, to the somewhat volatile average of 1-2 BTC as of late — regularly spiking far in excess of that.

The New Factor This Time

Ordinals present a very new incentive dynamic to the halving this go around that was not present at any prior halving in Bitcoin’s history. Rare sats. At the heart of Ordinals Theory is that satoshis from specific blocks can be tracked and “owned” based on its arbitrary interpretation of the transaction history of the blockchain, based on assuming specific amounts sent to specific outputs “send that sat” there. The other aspect of the theory is assigning rarity values to specific sats. Each block has a coinbase, thus producing an ordinal. But each block is different in importance to the scheme. Each normal block produces an “uncommon” sat, the first block of each difficulty adjustment produces a “rare” sat, and the first block of each halving cycle produces an “epic” sat.

This halving will be the first one since the widespread adoption of Ordinal Theory by a subset of Bitcoin users. There has never been the production of an “epic” sat while there was material market demand for it from a large and developed ecosystem. The market demand for that specific sat could wind up being valued at absurd multiples of what the coinbase reward itself is valued at in terms of just fungible satoshis.

The fact that a large market segment in the Bitcoin space would value that single coinbase drastically higher than any other creates an incentive for miners to fight over it by reorganizing the blockchain immediately after the halving. The only time such a thing has happened in history was during the very first halving, when the block reward decreased from 50 BTC to 25 BTC. Some miners continued trying to mine blocks rewarding 50 BTC in the coinbase after the supply cut, and gave up shortly after when the rest of the network ignored their efforts. This time around, the incentive to reorg isn’t based around ignoring the consensus rules and hoping people come along to your side, it's fighting over who is allowed to mine a completely valid block because of the value collectors will ascribe to that single coinbase.

There are no guarantees that such a reorg will actually occur, but there is a very large financial incentive for miners to do so. If it does occur, the length for which it will go on ultimately depends on how much that “epic” sat could be worth on the market to pay for the lost revenue from fighting over a single block rather than progressing the chain.

Each halving in Bitcoin’s history has been a pivotal event people watch, but this go around it has the potential to be much more interesting than past halvings.

How An Epic Sat Battle Could Play Out

There are a few ways this could play out in my opinion. The first and most obvious way is that nothing happens. For whatever reason, miners do not judge that the potential market value of the first “epic” sat mined since Ordinals adoption took off is worth the opportunity cost of wasting energy reorging the blockchain and foregoing the money they could make by simply mining the next block. If miners do not think the extra premium the ordinal can fetch is worth the cost of giving up moving on to the next block, they simply won’t do it.

The next possibility is a result of nuanced scales of economy. Imagine a larger scale mining operation can afford to risk more “lost blocks” engaging in a reorg fight over the “epic” sat. That larger miner with more capital to put on the table can afford to take a larger risk. In this scenario, we might see a few odd reorg attempts by larger miners with smaller operations not even trying, and essentially minimal disruption. This would play out if miners think there is some premium they can acquire for the ordinal, but not a massive premium worth serious disruption to the network.

The last scenario would be if a market develops bidding for the “epic” sat ahead of time, and miners can have a clear picture that the ordinal is valued massively above the market value of the fungible sat itself. In this case, miners may fight over that block for an extended period of time. The logic behind not reorging the blockchain is that you are losing money, you are not only forgoing the reward of just mining the next block, but you are also continuing to incur the cost of running your mining operations. In a situation where the market is publicly signaling how much the “epic” sat is worth, miners have a very clear idea of how long they can forgo moving onto the next block and still wind up with a net profit by attaining the post-halving coinbase reward with the ordinal. In this scenario the network could see substantial disruption until miners begin approaching the point of incurring a guaranteed loss even if they do successfully wind up mining this block without it being reorged.

Regardless of which way things actually play out, this is going to be a factor to consider each halving going forward unless the demand and marketplace for ordinals dies off.

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