Minecraft Treasure Hunt ‘SatoshiQuest’ Will Cost You $1 on the Bitcoin Trail
Minecraft | Source: AP/Jae C. Hong
- New Minecraft server sets players on a treasure hunt to find hidden Bitcoin.
- Each new life costs $1, and proceeds are pooled for the eventual winner.
- Dead Minecraft servers litter the history of cryptocurrency. Can SatoshiQuest withstand another sudden increase in BTC’s transaction fees?
Bitcoin can now be earned by Minecraft players thanks to the new SatoshiQuest server [Github]. Players pay $1 for each new life, the proceeds of which go into a pool for the eventual winner.
Players connect to their own unique in-game Bitcoin wallet which is displayed on the screen HUD (seen below). The goal is to find the hidden Bitcoin before everyone else.
When a player gets close to the treasure (within 25% of the total blocks), their position is broadcasted to all other players. According to the creator of the server, this is to give everyone a fair chance and to make sure no one camps on the loot spot.
All Bitcoin transactions are completed on-chain for now. Its creator has expressed a willingness to see a fork [Reddit] of the server which would incorporate Lightning Network transactions.
Bitcoin’s Mincraft Success May Be Decided By Its Price
Bitcoin’s average on-chain transaction fee has fluctuated between $0.30 and $0.50 for most of 2019. That’s the lowest BTC’s fees have been in 12 months.
Yet historical data shows that whenever Bitcoin increases in popularity, its on-chain fees rise drastically [Bitinfocharts.com]. Little over six months ago when BTC surged to $14,000, its transaction fees spiked to $6.50. During December 2017’s surge, Bitcoin fees topped out at $65.
With that in mind, it may be wise to take advantage of this Bitcoin Minecraft server sooner rather than later.
As early as 2015 Bitcoin was already being incorporated into Minecraft servers. However, the coin’s meteoric rise over the next few years came with rising transaction fees that made it untenable for such use-cases.
PlayMC was once a popular Minecraft server [XBT.net] which awarded players satoshis (the smallest unit of Bitcoin) for completing in-game tasks. The server shut down in 2017 – the year of Bitcoin’s greatest price increase to date.
Minecraft servers incorporating various altcoins also litter the history of cryptocurrency. Both Dogecoin (DOGE) and DigiByte (DGB) servers have come and gone in previous years. Few applications managed to gain popularity or withstand the constantly shifting cryptocurrency landscape.
