From prayers to marriage proposals, what other hidden messages can you find in the Bitcoin Blockchain?
The Bitcoin blockchain is not only a record of transactions; it is also riddled with digital graffiti.
Miners and users skilled in steganography – the art of hiding a message, image, video, or other data in an ordinary file – have been hiding data on the blockchain since the first block was mined in 2009.
Because of this, the Bitcoin blockchain has been a vast collection of hidden messages, covering everything from support for protocol changes from various Bitcoin miners to newspaper headlines, obscenities, art, music, and film, along with records of marriages, obituaries, and a birth of a child.
This creative use of the most innovative transaction protocol is sure to provide historians in the future with a unique cultural artifact. If Bitcoin dies, thousands of copies of the blockchain remain. The messages will, debatably, exist for as long as humanity, and projects like the Doomsday Blockchain and Messages from the Mines are prepared to immortalize them.
Here are some of the unearthed messages on the Bitcoin blockchain.
- The Times headline in the Genesis block
Bitcoin’s most popular message is kept in the coinbase, the part of a block that is filled in by the blockchain miner, of its very first block.
It was included by the protocol’s pseudonymous creator Satoshi Nakamoto and included the headline from the front page of The Times, January 3, 2009:
“Chancellor on brink of second bailout for banks.”
The headline talks about the British bank bailouts after the wake of the 2008 financial crisis, which Nakamoto used to draw attention to the new, peer-to-peer currency that he hoped will one day replace an imperfect monetary system.
- The 2020 Bitcoin Halving
Bitcoin went through a radical reduction in mining rewards every four years; this process is known as the halving. According to preset rules in Bitcoin’s code, mining rewards are cut in half, and it is often linked to a surge in price. Thus, it has become something of a watershed event for the Bitcoin enthusiasts, who celebrate the event with live countdown parties.
Amidst the previous halving last May 2020, in the block 629,999, the miner F2Pool chose to pay homage to the origin of Bitcoin and then immortalize the new financial crisis. They included a headline from the New York Times, dated last April 9, 2020, which read:
“With $2.3T Injection, Fed’s Plan Far Exceeds 2008 Rescue.”
- “Were fine” – Julian Assange.
Last 2016, rumors that Wikileaks founder Julian Assange was dead have been circulating on the 8chan message board. Fearing that the Twitter account had been hacked, Wikileaks plumped for an unusual response.
With the use of many Bitcoin addresses that belonged to the organization, the non-profit published the news:
“were fine 8chan post fake.”
Steemit user named Khan documented the transactions.
It wasn’t the only time that Wikileaks had used the Bitcoin blockchain for messages. According to data from researcher Ken Shiriff, they had also embedded a 2.5-megabyte file on “Cablegate,” their infamous US diplomatic cables leak in 2020, along with a message for Bitcoin’s inventor:
“Free speech and free enterprise! Thank you, Satoshi!”
- The Len Sassaman Tribute
A tribute to cryptographer Len Sassaman has been put in the Bitcoin blockchain right after his death by fellow coders Dan Kaminsky and Travis Goodspeed.
“We dedicate this silly hack to Len, who would have found it absolutely hilarious,” wrote Bitcoin skeptic Kaminsky and Goodspeed in July 2011, soon after Dassaman’s suicide.
- A biblical message to protect against the “Mark of the Beast.”
When the block “666,666” rolled around last January 2020, a miner or user manifestly decided extra protection was called for and inscribed a biblical message in the coinbase.
The number “666,666,” or the so-called “Mark of the Beast,” is associated with the Devil or the Antichrist. The message left on the block can be interpreted to mean living for others’ good, being honest to oneself, and then overcoming evil with good – an approval to Bitcoin’s core ethos: a fair, comprehensive monetary system for all.
Nevertheless, it is not the first prayer left on the blockchain. A miner named Eligius is known for including Catholic prayers, which have attracted some controversy, and insults, and also rickrolls – a practice that involves sharing a disguised hyperlink that leads the victims to the music video for the 1987 Rick Astley song entitled “Never Gonna Give You Up.”
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