Over the course of 332 transactions, the anonymous wallet spent about 1.5 BTC, worth about $66,000 at current prices, nicking almost all of the money. 9MB of encrypted data On the Bitcoin blockchain.
The most expensive transactions had fees in the thousands of dollars each, but most transactions were closer to $200. However, no one can yet read the engraved data because the data remains encrypted.
Ordinals Explorer X account on Ord.io Posted The inscription leads to jokes, speculations, and Rickrolls from X users guessing the motivation behind the action.
This process was enabled through the Ordinals protocol, which attributes data to specific satoshis, the smallest unit of Bitcoin. Ordinal numbers are typically used to store art directly on the chain, but they can inscribe any type of data, including encrypted text.
This inscription is not the only recent strange use of the Bitcoin blockchain. Recently, an anonymous wallet sent $1.2 million to the Genesis wallet mined by Satoshi Nakamoto. The funds in Satoshi’s wallet haven’t moved since 2010, meaning the money will likely never be recovered.
Disclaimer: The Block is an independent media outlet delivering news, research and data. As of November 2023, Foresight Ventures is a majority investor in The Block. Foresight Ventures invests in other companies in the cryptocurrency space. Cryptocurrency exchange Bitget is an anchor LP of Foresight Ventures. The Block continues to operate independently to provide objective, impactful and timely information about the cryptocurrency industry. Below are our current financial disclosures.
© 2023 The Block. All rights reserved. This article is provided for informational purposes only. It is not provided or intended to be used as legal, tax, investment, financial or other advice.