Mysterious Bitcoiner spends $64K to inscribe 9MB of data on Bitcoin

An unidentified Bitcoiner has just spent approximately $64,000 in fees to inscribe nearly 9 megabytes of raw binary data on the Bitcoin blockchain.

According to a Jan. 7 post on X (formerly Twitter) from the Ordinals explorer Ord.io, more than 1 Bitcoin ( BTC ) was used to create 332 inscriptions at around 11:20 am UTC on Jan. 6 — consisting of "raw binary data.

However, no one appears to have an answer for what the data shows, with one user even trying to use OpenAI’s ChatGPT to solve it, without luck.

BREAKING: Someone just spent >1 BTC to inscribe 8.93 MB of raw binary data into Bitcoin.

Can anybody decode it to find out what it is?

→ https://t.co/PAaKCWVDus pic.twitter.com/wIpOsgwmhF

— Ord.io (@ord_io) January 6, 2024

“Some people are saying it may be encrypted so potentially impossible/very hard to decrypt FYI,”  remarked  Leonidas, host of The Ordinal Show, in a Jan. 7 post.

Meanwhile, users are also pondering who inscribed the data in the first place. The Bitcoin address involved in the mysterious inscription spree — “bc1pnp…zwd0th” — is simply titled “Unnamed” on Ord.io.

The encrypted data includes a range of English, Greek and mathematics symbols.

Interestingly, two of the 332 inscriptions are marked with a digital pepperoni pizza, which Ord.io explained means it contains sats from the 10,000 BTC used to purchase two Papa John's pepperoni pizzas from Early Bitcoin contributor Laszlo Hanyecz on May 22, 2010.

The recent inscription mystery comes only a day after a whopping 26.9 BTC, worth $1.17 million, was sent to Bitcoin’s Genesis wallet — the first Bitcoin wallet ever created — on Jan. 5, which prompted a mix of theories from industry pundits.

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One of Coinbase’s directors, Conor Grogan, pondered whether Satoshi Nakamoto “woke up” and transferred the Bitcoin from Binance or someone “just burned a million dollars.”

Pro-XRP lawyer Jeremy Hogan meanwhile floated that someone may have done it to flush out the anonymous Bitcoin creator, as they would be forced by forcing them to report the funds to the U.S. Internal Revenue Service or break the law.

Some, however, pointed out the theory would only hold water if Nakamoto were subject to U.S. tax laws.

This lawyer thinks someone sent $1.2 million to Satoshi to reveal his identity pic.twitter.com/qMnwWY3HAj

— borovik.eth (@3orovik) January 7, 2024

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