Rare Sats and Rare Sats trading on Magisat

[Ambatman]

If you're a Bitcoin fan and you believe in it long term, you appreciate what these Two Legends gave us, and you want to own a piece of history by owning a piece of Satoshi or Hal's sats, would you not?

If I get it then yaay, still going to use it
I'm not going to actively seek it, because it still perform same function as other Sats.
Well anybody can do themselves. What's valuable to you may not be valuable to me
I still believe that all Sats are equal.
Quick one, Can one make a transaction and specify a Sats they don't plan on spending?
Like sending every other Sats and leaving a specified special one?

[DenBlad]

If you're a Bitcoin fan and you believe in it long term, you appreciate what these Two Legends gave us, and you want to own a piece of history by owning a piece of Satoshi or Hal's sats, would you not?

If I get it then yaay, still going to use it
I'm not going to actively seek it, because it still perform same function as other Sats.
Well anybody can do themselves. What's valuable to you may not be valuable to me
I still believe that all Sats are equal.
Quick one, Can one make a transaction and specify a Sats they don't plan on spending?
Like sending every other Sats and leaving a specified special one?

You can always search your wallet addresses on websites like magisat.io where they make it easy to show you a list of sats that are "rare"
Yes, you can isolate sats so you don't spend them accidentally. They show up as "Safe to spend sats" on the website. Magisat has an isolation tool that separates your regular sats from the rare ones. Xverse is the most common wallet that is able to help identify sats in the wallet.  Xverse warns you when spending those rare sats.

[Ambatman]

 Xverse warns you when spending those rare sats.

How do they define a rare Sats?
What about I don't want to send a Sat because its date just commemorate my wedding day or something quite personal.
Well not quite interested in it been rare, just curious if the Bitcoin protocol allows such transactions.
So a third party is needed to accomplish this?

[DenBlad]

 Xverse warns you when spending those rare sats.

How do they define a rare Sats?
What about I don't want to send a Sat because its date just commemorate my wedding day or something quite personal.
Well not quite interested in it been rare, just curious if the Bitcoin protocol allows such transactions.
So a third party is needed to accomplish this?

I don't think I understand the wedding sat or special sat.
the third party tools is all we have right now to help us differentiate the rares against regular sats.

[vjudeu]

He did not ever specify on or off chain or any specific restrictions in correlation to the use cases.

Then why he was against putting BitDNS on Bitcoin?

Piling every proof-of-work quorum system in the world into one dataset doesn't scale.

Bitcoin and BitDNS can be used separately.  Users shouldn't have to download all of both to use one or the other.  BitDNS users may not want to download everything the next several unrelated networks decide to pile in either.

The networks need to have separate fates.  BitDNS users might be completely liberal about adding any large data features since relatively few domain registrars are needed, while Bitcoin users might get increasingly tyrannical about limiting the size of the chain so it's easy for lots of users and small devices.

See? If you want non-monetary use case, then use your own "dataset", to not disturb regular users, and take down their payments.

Edit:

Why did Satoshi not create a block explorer from Day Number 1?

1. Because everyone had a full node, so no "block explorer" was needed.
2. For a working system, you are mainly interested in your own coins. If you have enough knowledge, then you can explore someone else's transactions, but a regular user doesn't need that feature. If you use traditional cash, you are interested in your banknotes, and not in reading serial numbers, and guessing, which of your neighbours had it in the past.

What conversation did they have to determine a block explorer was required?

https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=1727.0

How many people were interested in block explorers?

Mainly those, who wanted to observe their peers. If someone was interested only in its own wallet, then that person didn't think about any kind of block explorer. However, when more and more people thought, that everything is anonymous, and works like Monero, and nobody can see anything, behind its own coins, then it created some need, to show those people, that things can be traced, and that they should be more careful, when they make their payments.

Note that block explorer for Monero would be much less useful, than for Bitcoin.

A block explorer was eventually born to tag and identify transactions without depending on the Core Software.

If you are a user, then you don't need a full node, to use it. However, if someone wants to run a block explorer, then that person needs it, also because different nodes can have different mempools (and sometimes different blocks, until they are reorged).

you want to own a piece of history by owning a piece of Satoshi or Hal's sats, would you not?

Not really. And mining a lot of coins in testnets, clearly showed me, why it is the case. Every time, when one of my addresses is publicly connected, then I cannot use it anymore, and I have to switch into a different coins. And the same is true with coins, received from signature campaigns: I never know, how many people would explore my history, so I always assume, that every time, when I move those coins, it is obvious, that they are owned by me.

In case of test coins, it is easy: they are worthless, so I can just give them away (and call it: buying some anonymity). In case of mainnet, I usually deposit them somewhere, to then withdraw, at a different time, on a different end, or even as a payment to somebody. Because for someone, it may be valuable, to "touch vjudeu's coins", but for me, it is just some lost anonymity, and turned into pseudonymity.

[DenBlad]

Being against BitDNS was a very smart move, and I would be against it too. It's not really related here to rare sats because we have a way to discover and separate the two kinds of sats.
BitDNS is one of the reasons devs are moving to Bitcoin L2 that interact with a completely separate system while security of Bitcoin is the main focus instead.

Not everyone wants to own anything related to history. Not everyone can work at a Coffee Shop making Coffee for people all day. I would just argue it is safe to say, most Bitcoin enthusiasts that potentially believe in the long term growth of bitcoin, may want to look into Rare sats.  And just like a Block Explorer was born for ease of use without the technical aspect, a rare sats indexer and third party tools were born to give people the ability to identify them.

He did not ever specify on or off chain or any specific restrictions in correlation to the use cases.

Then why he was against putting BitDNS on Bitcoin?

Piling every proof-of-work quorum system in the world into one dataset doesn't scale.

Bitcoin and BitDNS can be used separately.  Users shouldn't have to download all of both to use one or the other.  BitDNS users may not want to download everything the next several unrelated networks decide to pile in either.

The networks need to have separate fates.  BitDNS users might be completely liberal about adding any large data features since relatively few domain registrars are needed, while Bitcoin users might get increasingly tyrannical about limiting the size of the chain so it's easy for lots of users and small devices.

See? If you want non-monetary use case, then use your own "dataset", to not disturb regular users, and take down their payments.

Edit:

Why did Satoshi not create a block explorer from Day Number 1?

1. Because everyone had a full node, so no "block explorer" was needed.
2. For a working system, you are mainly interested in your own coins. If you have enough knowledge, then you can explore someone else's transactions, but a regular user doesn't need that feature. If you use traditional cash, you are interested in your banknotes, and not in reading serial numbers, and guessing, which of your neighbours had it in the past.

What conversation did they have to determine a block explorer was required?

https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=1727.0

How many people were interested in block explorers?

Mainly those, who wanted to observe their peers. If someone was interested only in its own wallet, then that person didn't think about any kind of block explorer. However, when more and more people thought, that everything is anonymous, and works like Monero, and nobody can see anything, behind its own coins, then it created some need, to show those people, that things can be traced, and that they should be more careful, when they make their payments.

Note that block explorer for Monero would be much less useful, than for Bitcoin.

A block explorer was eventually born to tag and identify transactions without depending on the Core Software.

If you are a user, then you don't need a full node, to use it. However, if someone wants to run a block explorer, then that person needs it, also because different nodes can have different mempools (and sometimes different blocks, until they are reorged).

you want to own a piece of history by owning a piece of Satoshi or Hal's sats, would you not?

Not really. And mining a lot of coins in testnets, clearly showed me, why it is the case. Every time, when one of my addresses is publicly connected, then I cannot use it anymore, and I have to switch into a different coins. And the same is true with coins, received from signature campaigns: I never know, how many people would explore my history, so I always assume, that every time, when I move those coins, it is obvious, that they are owned by me.

In case of test coins, it is easy: they are worthless, so I can just give them away (and call it: buying some anonymity). In case of mainnet, I usually deposit them somewhere, to then withdraw, at a different time, on a different end, or even as a payment to somebody. Because for someone, it may be valuable, to "touch vjudeu's coins", but for me, it is just some lost anonymity, and turned into pseudonymity.

[vjudeu]

we have a way to discover and separate the two kinds of sats

No, because the system is arbitrary. It would be much better, if it would at least consider sighashes. If you have SIGHASH_ALL, then it means, that all inputs are used to create all outputs. And if you have SIGHASH_SINGLE|SIGHASH_ANYONECANPAY, then the order of entries in a single transaction can be changed, which also affects, where each satoshi will go. Which means, that Ordinals are incompatible with CoinJoin, and other existing protocols.

More than that: they are incompatible with UTXO set rules, for example zero satoshis. And it is the case, even though I explicitly told Casey, that it could be a problem, and he ignored the problem altogether:

https://lists.linuxfoundation.org/pipermail/bitcoin-dev/2022-February/019985.html

> The system sounds expensive eventually to cope with approximately 2,100,000,000,000,000 ordinals.
What about zero satoshis? There are transactions, where zero satoshis are created or moved. Typical users cannot do that, but miners can, we currently have such transactions in the blockchain, for example 9f0b871e28fa19e2308e2fa74243bf2dcf23b160754df847d5f1e41aabe499d1 (check the last two inputs).

https://lists.linuxfoundation.org/pipermail/bitcoin-dev/2022-February/019986.html

​What about zero satoshis?


A zero satoshi input or output carries no ordinals, so an ordinal index can
ignore them.

See? He was informed about the problem, did nothing about it, and the end result was quite easy to predict: https://github.com/supertestnet/breaker-of-jpegs

[quary.sats]

 Xverse warns you when spending those rare sats.

How do they define a rare Sats?
What about I don't want to send a Sat because its date just commemorate my wedding day or something quite personal.
Well not quite interested in it been rare, just curious if the Bitcoin protocol allows such transactions.
So a third party is needed to accomplish this?

https://docs.ordinals.com/ tells you what sat ranges your utxos contain. Example: https://ordinals.com/output/3ea3bc8d7991869294ce43450eefee0de47a592417a59bd440e7d15fe74f4824:15

This utxo has 600 sats: 45039459700-45039460300 (600 sats). There are 5000000000 mined in a block from the first epoch. You can observe that this particular utxo has satoshis from the first Bitcoin mined by satoshi in block 9.

If you want to preserve some rare sats (let's assume you find them in a bigger utxo), you can split that utxo into 3: sats before the offset of the ones you're interested in, sats that you're interested in, sats after the ones you're interested in. Then you keep the utxo with the sats ur interested in safe. there are already tools built for this.

[garlonicon]

If you want to preserve some rare sats (let's assume you find them in a bigger utxo), you can split that utxo into 3

Imagine how easier could it be, if only signed things would move. And if you would have to explicitly specify, what is moved, and where, for example as a commitment to R-value in a signature.

But instead, Ordinals force users to create more UTXOs, for no reason. Not to mention transactions, which store ASCII-encoded transaction data inside OP_RETURN, or even JSON files. Some people wonder, why sometimes fees are high. And the answer is simple: if you have a protocol, designed to bloat the chain, then it will take more space than needed, and increase fees for everyone, for no reason.

[quary.sats]

If you want to preserve some rare sats (let's assume you find them in a bigger utxo), you can split that utxo into 3

Imagine how easier could it be, if only signed things would move. And if you would have to explicitly specify, what is moved, and where, for example as a commitment to R-value in a signature.

But instead, Ordinals force users to create more UTXOs, for no reason. Not to mention transactions, which store ASCII-encoded transaction data inside OP_RETURN, or even JSON files. Some people wonder, why sometimes fees are high. And the answer is simple: if you have a protocol, designed to bloat the chain, then it will take more space than needed, and increase fees for everyone, for no reason.

I am 100% sure that if a more elegant model is designed for Bitcoin NFTs, it will be adopted in time. When somebody doesn't like an "innovation" that people use, the rational thing to do is design it in a better way. For some reason, laser eyes prefer to shout and cry in their podcasts, instead of creating the best version they can create that satisfies the market needs.

[vjudeu]

I am 100% sure that if a more elegant model is designed for Bitcoin NFTs, it will be adopted in time.

It won't, because the main goal for Ordinals was not to make NFTs. Their goal was to turn Bitcoin into a cloud storage. It was never about "ownership", it was always about "pushing data". And before Ordinals, there existed many NFT platforms, so it was not a problem, to design a system, where by signing a Bitcoin key, you would own some NFT on another chain. We even have pay-to-sudoku, since 2016.

But if your goal is to push data instead, then you don't care about ownership, which is why Ordinals don't care, who owns a particular satoshi (because if they would care, then that information would be expressed directly, instead of rolling a dice, and betting that the client will order all inputs, outputs and amounts correctly).

When somebody doesn't like an "innovation" that people use, the rational thing to do is design it in a better way.

The only reason why Bitcoin users would care about Ordinals, is that they take down regular payments. If not that, then nobody would care. For example, imagine a scenario, where this forum would be used as a cloud storage, instead of being used as a forum. Or when people would trade things for merits. Then, the role of forum users is not to "design it in a better way", but to "get rid of the abuse". And if accessing regular threads would be stopped, because of spam, then it would be rational, to introduce some kind of filters, and banning the spammers, to stop the abuse.

And the same thing could happen in Bitcoin, but people didn't want to stop the spam, for some reason.

For some reason, laser eyes prefer to shout and cry in their podcasts, instead of creating the best version they can create that satisfies the market needs.

There are some mining pools, which censor Ordinals. There are also some users, which stopped using Taproot, because of Ordinals. You want NFTs on Bitcoin? Then put your NFT on some existing platform, designed for NFTs, and then use some hash-locked contract (or even point-locked contract, since Taproot is there), to buy or sell those things, if you really want. If you put every data on-chain instead, then you take the room, reserved for other payments, and then, everyone will pay more fees, because of that.

So, the problem is not technical anymore, since many solutions were proposed. But if users don't want to adopt those solutions, then what else can be done? If you abuse the system, and take down regular payments, then the only rational answer, is to censor some Ordinals, to process regular payments faster. Fortunately, many Ordinals are now confirming in testnet3 instead, so the mainnet can enjoy cheaper transactions, at least for a while.

[quary.sats]

I am 100% sure that if a more elegant model is designed for Bitcoin NFTs, it will be adopted in time.

It won't, because the main goal for Ordinals was not to make NFTs. Their goal was to turn Bitcoin into a cloud storage. It was never about "ownership", it was always about "pushing data". And before Ordinals, there existed many NFT platforms, so it was not a problem, to design a system, where by signing a Bitcoin key, you would own some NFT on another chain. We even have pay-to-sudoku, since 2016.

But if your goal is to push data instead, then you don't care about ownership, which is why Ordinals don't care, who owns a particular satoshi (because if they would care, then that information would be expressed directly, instead of rolling a dice, and betting that the client will order all inputs, outputs and amounts correctly).

When somebody doesn't like an "innovation" that people use, the rational thing to do is design it in a better way.

The only reason why Bitcoin users would care about Ordinals, is that they take down regular payments. If not that, then nobody would care. For example, imagine a scenario, where this forum would be used as a cloud storage, instead of being used as a forum. Or when people would trade things for merits. Then, the role of forum users is not to "design it in a better way", but to "get rid of the abuse". And if accessing regular threads would be stopped, because of spam, then it would be rational, to introduce some kind of filters, and banning the spammers, to stop the abuse.

And the same thing could happen in Bitcoin, but people didn't want to stop the spam, for some reason.

For some reason, laser eyes prefer to shout and cry in their podcasts, instead of creating the best version they can create that satisfies the market needs.

There are some mining pools, which censor Ordinals. There are also some users, which stopped using Taproot, because of Ordinals. You want NFTs on Bitcoin? Then put your NFT on some existing platform, designed for NFTs, and then use some hash-locked contract (or even point-locked contract, since Taproot is there), to buy or sell those things, if you really want. If you put every data on-chain instead, then you take the room, reserved for other payments, and then, everyone will pay more fees, because of that.

So, the problem is not technical anymore, since many solutions were proposed. But if users don't want to adopt those solutions, then what else can be done? If you abuse the system, and take down regular payments, then the only rational answer, is to censor some Ordinals, to process regular payments faster. Fortunately, many Ordinals are now confirming in testnet3 instead, so the mainnet can enjoy cheaper transactions, at least for a while.

I mean hey, if you had the majority of the market on the "censor txs side" I guess this is what would've happened. The way things are, it appears that the market likes Ordinals. Also, I don't think that Bitcoin is designed to prioritize some tx above any other. Bitcoin is made to blend in with the profit-driven market. If these transactions bring more fees, then these are Bitcoin's priorities. It doesn't matter what you like, and it doesn't matter which transactions we consider important. If spamming on this forum is what would bring it more profits, then guess what, you'd probably use this as a cloud storage.

Anyway, I'm not a hard supporter of inscriptions. Rare sats do not require any on-chain information and do not clog the network with anything. Also, there's no other standard for rare sats other than the one established by Ordinals theory (which is a fairly decent one).

[DenBlad]

I agree with quary. I think the conversation went into ordinals and bitcoin NFT's too much when the main topic here is Rare Sats. Quary brought up a good point that rare sats don't use much storage and it will not make a major dent on these bitcoin network fees like Ordinals did. I am a Bitcoin Fan, and I support historical time pieces on the blockchain like Satoshi's mined Block 9 or the First P2P Transaction Block 9 450x or Hal Finney's Block 78 sats. I always knew one day we would have the ability to distinguish regular sats and rare ones.

I am 100% sure that if a more elegant model is designed for Bitcoin NFTs, it will be adopted in time.

It won't, because the main goal for Ordinals was not to make NFTs. Their goal was to turn Bitcoin into a cloud storage. It was never about "ownership", it was always about "pushing data". And before Ordinals, there existed many NFT platforms, so it was not a problem, to design a system, where by signing a Bitcoin key, you would own some NFT on another chain. We even have pay-to-sudoku, since 2016.

But if your goal is to push data instead, then you don't care about ownership, which is why Ordinals don't care, who owns a particular satoshi (because if they would care, then that information would be expressed directly, instead of rolling a dice, and betting that the client will order all inputs, outputs and amounts correctly).

When somebody doesn't like an "innovation" that people use, the rational thing to do is design it in a better way.

The only reason why Bitcoin users would care about Ordinals, is that they take down regular payments. If not that, then nobody would care. For example, imagine a scenario, where this forum would be used as a cloud storage, instead of being used as a forum. Or when people would trade things for merits. Then, the role of forum users is not to "design it in a better way", but to "get rid of the abuse". And if accessing regular threads would be stopped, because of spam, then it would be rational, to introduce some kind of filters, and banning the spammers, to stop the abuse.

And the same thing could happen in Bitcoin, but people didn't want to stop the spam, for some reason.

For some reason, laser eyes prefer to shout and cry in their podcasts, instead of creating the best version they can create that satisfies the market needs.

There are some mining pools, which censor Ordinals. There are also some users, which stopped using Taproot, because of Ordinals. You want NFTs on Bitcoin? Then put your NFT on some existing platform, designed for NFTs, and then use some hash-locked contract (or even point-locked contract, since Taproot is there), to buy or sell those things, if you really want. If you put every data on-chain instead, then you take the room, reserved for other payments, and then, everyone will pay more fees, because of that.

So, the problem is not technical anymore, since many solutions were proposed. But if users don't want to adopt those solutions, then what else can be done? If you abuse the system, and take down regular payments, then the only rational answer, is to censor some Ordinals, to process regular payments faster. Fortunately, many Ordinals are now confirming in testnet3 instead, so the mainnet can enjoy cheaper transactions, at least for a while.

I mean hey, if you had the majority of the market on the "censor txs side" I guess this is what would've happened. The way things are, it appears that the market likes Ordinals. Also, I don't think that Bitcoin is designed to prioritize some tx above any other. Bitcoin is made to blend in with the profit-driven market. If these transactions bring more fees, then these are Bitcoin's priorities. It doesn't matter what you like, and it doesn't matter which transactions we consider important. If spamming on this forum is what would bring it more profits, then guess what, you'd probably use this as a cloud storage.

Anyway, I'm not a hard supporter of inscriptions. Rare sats do not require any on-chain information and do not clog the network with anything. Also, there's no other standard for rare sats other than the one established by Ordinals theory (which is a fairly decent one).

[franky1]

https://docs.ordinals.com/ tells you what sat ranges your utxos contain. Example: https://ordinals.com/output/3ea3bc8d7991869294ce43450eefee0de47a592417a59bd440e7d15fe74f4824:15

This utxo has 600 sats: 45039459700-45039460300 (600 sats). There are 5000000000 mined in a block from the first epoch. You can observe that this particular utxo has satoshis from the first Bitcoin mined by satoshi in block 9.

If you want to preserve some rare sats (let's assume you find them in a bigger utxo), you can split that utxo into 3: sats before the offset of the ones you're interested in, sats that you're interested in, sats after the ones you're interested in. Then you keep the utxo with the sats ur interested in safe. there are already tools built for this.

that txid : 3ea3bc8d7991869294ce43450eefee0de47a592417a59bd440e7d15fe74f4824
has a fee of 10200 sats. so the first 10200 sats of that tx are given back to the miners.

yep if output 15 is "600 sats: 45039459700-45039460300" in your eyes.. its actually not
because the fee has been taken and so output 15 is actually 45,039,469,900-45,039,470,500
(if we only count the offset change due to the fee of that specific tx)

technically it is further along then that because if you start doing real economic counting of sat positions from the original coin creation of block reward from the historic data, each input spend of fee puts each output off by the fee, meaning after several transaction taints/descendants later, each output of each descendant(child) tx is off by the fee amount. meaning the transaction output in question is off by a larger magnitude

have a nice day calculating its real position of output 15 of that tx

[d5000]

I have several points to criticise the "rare sats" concept. I don't repeat pooya87's and Ambatman's points but some are somewhat related.

My main point is that in an open system like Bitcoin, it's likely that the value of rare sats will decrease continuously because the sats will become increasingly less rare over time, due to certain incentives.

First because there will be a proliferation of "historical" satoshis. There are a lot of transactions, dates and events you could consider "historic" in the Bitcoin world.

I give a non-obvious example: What about if we consider the first satoshi of the person who bought at the bottom (i.e. to the lowest price) of a historic bear market "rare"? We had (depending on counting) between 4 and 6 deep bear markets, and those who bought at the bottom were the "heroes" who bought into a falling knife, creating the base for a new bull market.

Second, the method of considering a sat "rare" due to its position is also open for new approaches. We already have the example of "black" sats, the last ones in a difficulty or halving cycle. In another thread I have brought up the following examples:

1) A sat which is situated exactly in the center of all coins mined during a cycle.

2) As an extension to 1), a sat which is situated in a mined transaction in the exact center of a cycle, not in the mined coins. The interesting property of this approach is that there may be cycles without such a "center sat", which means that they are more rare than the traditional uncommon sats.

3) A sat which is exactly positioned at the "golden ratio" between the first and last block of halving cycles.

Third, what if some whale decides to create an own ordinals protocol using franky1's approach to count the fee first when sats are transacted, because he has bought (for almost no money) a lot of these sats? We could get two rival versions of the protocol, and while one will perhaps "win" it's possible that both are used.

All of these approaches allow to create a very high amount of rare sats over time, and that will make the average rare sat less rare. Incentives are always there: you identify an "interesting" event, mathematical property or whatever in secret, buy the sats in secret (e.g. on P2P exchanges) and then promote and establish them in the same way NFTs are promoted ...

[quary.sats]

I have several points to criticise the "rare sats" concept. I don't repeat pooya87's and Ambatman's points but some are somewhat related.

My main point is that in an open system like Bitcoin, it's likely that the value of rare sats will decrease continuously because the sats will become increasingly less rare over time, due to certain incentives.

First because there will be a proliferation of "historical" satoshis. There are a lot of transactions, dates and events you could consider "historic" in the Bitcoin world.

I give a non-obvious example: What about if we consider the first satoshi of the person who bought at the bottom (i.e. to the lowest price) of a historic bear market "rare"? We had (depending on counting) between 4 and 6 deep bear markets, and those who bought at the bottom were the "heroes" who bought into a falling knife, creating the base for a new bull market.

Second, the method of considering a sat "rare" due to its position is also open for new approaches. We already have the example of "black" sats, the last ones in a difficulty or halving cycle. In another thread I have brought up the following examples:

1) A sat which is situated exactly in the center of all coins mined during a cycle.

2) As an extension to 1), a sat which is situated in a mined transaction in the exact center of a cycle, not in the mined coins. The interesting property of this approach is that there may be cycles without such a "center sat", which means that they are more rare than the traditional uncommon sats.

3) A sat which is exactly positioned at the "golden ratio" between the first and last block of halving cycles.

Third, what if some whale decides to create an own ordinals protocol using franky1's approach to count the fee first when sats are transacted, because he has bought (for almost no money) a lot of these sats? We could get two rival versions of the protocol, and while one will perhaps "win" it's possible that both are used.

All of these approaches allow to create a very high amount of rare sats over time, and that will make the average rare sat less rare. Incentives are always there: you identify an "interesting" event, mathematical property or whatever in secret, buy the sats in secret (e.g. on P2P exchanges) and then promote and establish them in the same way NFTs are promoted ...

That is a fair point, and some of those categories might even make sense. However, that doesn't dilute the value of sats from the first bitcoin transaction for example... in the same way that altcoins don't dilute the value of bitcoin.

About franky's point: he might be onto something, but there are arguments for the fees being the first to flow out or the last as well. I believe that's the
single arbitrary convention about rare sats.

Your point can apply in practice with the current indexing method tho: someone searching for some category of sats, then creating that category. In that case, it's up to the people to decide if there's really a value proposition with new rare sats categories or not. On magisat.io we list only what makes sense. Also, one shouldn't just jump into any category of rare sats. Some make more sense and have real historical meaning, while some other categories that don't can hit the market in the future, but that doesn't make the ones that make sense weaker imo.

[vjudeu]

in the same way that altcoins don't dilute the value of bitcoin

They obviously do, because you cannot have both, at the same time, on the same key, moving simultaneously in the same transactions (because many people create obstacles called "replay protection", while many networks would benefit, if every transaction would be 100% replayed). So, it creates an unnecessary competition, where in theory, you have 21 million coins limit, but in practice, as long as you can flood the market with a lot of new monetary systems, people will stop using the original network. And the supply of new altcoins is unlimited: you can create as many new altcoins, as you want, abusing the maximum supply.

I believe that's the single arbitrary convention about rare sats.

That's the problem: if things would be signature-based, then you would know exactly, what is signed, and which order is signed. But if signatures are ignored, and things just fly in a way, as they are specified in a given transaction, then they can be re-ordered in many cases.

For example: some wallets sort transaction outputs in ascending/descending order, or shuffle them specifically, for example by sorting them by address types. Then, you can trace someone, if you know, which client is used by that person. And then, if sats are flying in unsigned way, you are forced to give up your privacy, to put a given satoshi in a specific place.

but that doesn't make the ones that make sense weaker imo

Of course it does. See: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Interesting_number_paradox

[quary.sats]

in the same way that altcoins don't dilute the value of bitcoin

They obviously do, because you cannot have both, at the same time, on the same key, moving simultaneously in the same transactions (because many people create obstacles called "replay protection", while many networks would benefit, if every transaction would be 100% replayed). So, it creates an unnecessary competition, where in theory, you have 21 million coins limit, but in practice, as long as you can flood the market with a lot of new monetary systems, people will stop using the original network. And the supply of new altcoins is unlimited: you can create as many new altcoins, as you want, abusing the maximum supply.

I believe that's the single arbitrary convention about rare sats.

That's the problem: if things would be signature-based, then you would know exactly, what is signed, and which order is signed. But if signatures are ignored, and things just fly in a way, as they are specified in a given transaction, then they can be re-ordered in many cases.

For example: some wallets sort transaction outputs in ascending/descending order, or shuffle them specifically, for example by sorting them by address types. Then, you can trace someone, if you know, which client is used by that person. And then, if sats are flying in unsigned way, you are forced to give up your privacy, to put a given satoshi in a specific place.

but that doesn't make the ones that make sense weaker imo

Of course it does. See: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Interesting_number_paradox

The interesting number paradox was a good read, but I don't think it brings any obstacles in practice. I argue that there's a spectrum of interestingness. Sats from the first bitcoin are higher up the ladder than a sat that has a palindromic id. Ultimately, the market decides which are the most interesting ones, and that's a good thing because value, especially with collectibles, is subjective.

I'd also argue that without altcoins, there would be far fewer people onboarded in crypto nowadays. We shouldn't ignore the real attention market that we're living in. Altcoins, and especially altcoins that have good price actions serve as a very good way to onboard people to Bitcoin. I suspect neither of us knows if Bitcoin would've been better off without altcoins.

I was first very fascinated by Ethereum when I got into crypto. It seemed to me that it's a bit more potent than Bitcoin because of its programmability. It took around 1y or so for me to figure out the real difference between the two. I could say that Ethereum onboarded me to crypto, and then I turned to Bitcoin. I'm pretty sure there are many people like me out there. Even if altcoins are diluting Bitcoin, they cater to a broader market, which in turn has much higher chances of turning to Bitcoin.

You have a point of failure with the arbitrary way in which the sats flow through fees, but I believe that the broader market already agreed on the established consensus. This is also in the ord indexer code which is run by many entities/platforms, and this strengthens the consensus. If Casey wants to change this particular consensus and try to get the market to agree that the sats flow first to the miner fee, the market will reject this.

[d5000]

However, that doesn't dilute the value of sats from the first bitcoin transaction for example... in the same way that altcoins don't dilute the value of bitcoin.

I think there are different mechanisms of "dilution" in place.

Altcoins don't dilute the value of Bitcoin significatively because Bitcoin's value is based on network effects. There's an ecosystem of miners, merchants and service providers which can't simply be "copied" by an altcoin, even if the code can be copied.

By the way I think there is some dilution caused by altcoin competition which could in theory "take away" some value fron Bitcoin. But there are also positive effects: altcoins have expanded the niche of crypto, and enriched the ecosystem, e.g. via DeFi and NFTs, but also providing a more risky "playground" for speculative investing. This positive effect outweights any "dilution".

In contrast, the "rare sats" business works more like the collectible business, for example numismatics or stamps.

The dream of "rare sats" supporters is that "old rare sats" could get a status similar to an old coin or an old stamp. But there is a crucial difference: Old stamps or coins are valuable because they are difficult to preserve. Most old stamps or coins are lost, or damaged. In contrast, it is very rare that a Bitcoin is lost, although it does happen it is much less frequent than in the case of stamps or coins. And damage can't happen to a rare sat.

Thus, an "old" satoshi hasn't the same kind of "rareness" than an old stamp/coin/piece of art/whatever "material" collectible has. All satoshis have the same probability to exist.

For this reason I believe there is more dilution coming from new kinds of "rare sats". Some very rare cases ("epic sats" for example, and maybe the legendary pizza transaction, or Satoshi's coins which are thought of currently that they won't be moved) could escape from that effect because they are so rare that everybody knows them. But most other rare sats would compete one with another, and thus every new category which is discovered lowers the value of the existing ones (if no more investors are found - similarities with the P-word are pure casuality ).

I'd compare the relation between different rare sat categories not with bitcoin-altcoins but with the competition among different memecoins, BRC-20s and Runes, where also new coins tend to "dilute" the value of old ones.

[quary.sats]

However, that doesn't dilute the value of sats from the first bitcoin transaction for example... in the same way that altcoins don't dilute the value of bitcoin.

I think there are different mechanisms of "dilution" in place.

Altcoins don't dilute the value of Bitcoin significatively because Bitcoin's value is based on network effects. There's an ecosystem of miners, merchants and service providers which can't simply be "copied" by an altcoin, even if the code can be copied.

By the way I think there is some dilution caused by altcoin competition which could in theory "take away" some value fron Bitcoin. But there are also positive effects: altcoins have expanded the niche of crypto, and enriched the ecosystem, e.g. via DeFi and NFTs, but also providing a more risky "playground" for speculative investing. This positive effect outweights any "dilution".

In contrast, the "rare sats" business works more like the collectible business, for example numismatics or stamps.

The dream of "rare sats" supporters is that "old rare sats" could get a status similar to an old coin or an old stamp. But there is a crucial difference: Old stamps or coins are valuable because they are difficult to preserve. Most old stamps or coins are lost, or damaged. In contrast, it is very rare that a Bitcoin is lost, although it does happen it is much less frequent than in the case of stamps or coins. And damage can't happen to a rare sat.

Thus, an "old" satoshi hasn't the same kind of "rareness" than an old stamp/coin/piece of art/whatever "material" collectible has. All satoshis have the same probability to exist.

For this reason I believe there is more dilution coming from new kinds of "rare sats". Some very rare cases ("epic sats" for example, and maybe the legendary pizza transaction, or Satoshi's coins which are thought of currently that they won't be moved) could escape from that effect because they are so rare that everybody knows them. But most other rare sats would compete one with another, and thus every new category which is discovered lowers the value of the existing ones (if no more investors are found - similarities with the P-word are pure casuality ).

I'd compare the relation between different rare sat categories not with bitcoin-altcoins but with the competition among different memecoins, BRC-20s and Runes, where also new coins tend to "dilute" the value of old ones.

Old sats are also mostly locked. From the first 1000 blocks, only bitcoin from ~100 of them are in circulation. The older the sats, the more lost/locked.
Yeah, some categories can compete with one another, but sats from block 9, old uncommon sats, or black sats (and in general sats from the early days) are hard to come by. So i'd argue you can make a comparison with old stamps. Bitcoin is a deflationary asset in the long haul because people occasionally lose it. This is mostly true for the early days of Bitcoin.