Virgin Bitcoin

Virgin Bitcoin is any Bitcoin that has never been part of a transaction since its minting.

What Is a Virgin Bitcoin?

A virgin Bitcoin is a Bitcoin with no transaction history associated with it. This means that it has never been spent or involved in any previous transactions. It’s generally a coin that a miner has received as a block reward and hasn’t spent yet.

Virgin Bitcoin are frequently spoken of as high-value targets for collectors, though their extreme rarity means that there isn’t much of a known market for them.

How Does a Virgin Crypto Work?

A coinbase transaction is a special transaction created by a miner as the first transaction in a block. Notably, these transactions are used to create new coins and are a key step miners must complete to receive a block reward. Thus, when coins created from a coinbase remain unspent or unmoved, they are called virgin coins.

What Makes Them So Rare?

The practical reality of mining means that most mining rewards immediately enter circulation. To explain, mining a block consumes a lot of computational power and requires expensive equipment. Thus, most miners immediately sell off their rewards to cover costs. 

On top of that, almost all mining is done through mining pools to increase the chances of earning block rewards. This adds extra steps to the mining process, where all the coinbase transactions go to a single entity (such as an exchange) and are then redistributed to individual miners.