cryptopotato.com
In an exciting showcase of the capabilities of Bitcoin’s network, someone has included a message in a specific BTC transaction, welcoming his newborn son to the world.
Hello, Noah!
In a rather interesting Reddit thread, a user of Bitcoin’s network demonstrated one of the more compelling use cases of its blockchain.
“I immortalized the birth of my first child in the best immutable and decentralized database I know of.”
As seen in the picture above, the user has sent 0.00104 BTC, worth just shy of $10 from one address to another.
To do this, the user probably generated a custom transaction and added one of the outputs as OP_RETURN, where he converted the text in hex code and included it in the output.
The message in the transaction reads:
Hello, Noah! Welcome to the world, little one.
The reasons as to why he did that could be various. If one thing is certain, however, is that this message will remain inscribed in Bitcoin’s ledger forever as the network is immutable and can’t be tampered with.
In other words, as long as humanity exists and even if Bitcoin were to, for some reason, die, copies of its blockchain would remain.
This also brings an interesting, yet widely discussed use case of BTC’s blockchain. It could serve as a decentralized storage database where control over the information won’t fall into the hands of a single, central authority. In theory, this can make it a lot safer as no one person would be able to change and alter the information, without the consensus of the governing majority.
Not The First Time
The Genesis Block – the first block in Bitcoin’s network, also has a secret message. It reads “The Times 03/Jan/2009 Chancellor on brink of second bailout for banks.”
It’s a reference to a headline for an article published on January 3rd, 2009, of the London Times, which talks about the failure of the British government to stimulate the economy after the 2007-2008 financial crisis. To many, this is Bitcoin’s mission statement.
More recently, another message appeared in addresses that self-proclaimed Satoshi Nakamoto, Craig Wright, claimed to own. Someone used the private keys for these addresses to sign a message that reads:
“Craig Steven Wright is a liar and a fraud. He doesn’t have the keys used to sign this message.
The Lightning Network is a significant achievement. However, we need to continue to work on improving on-chain capacity. Unfortunately, the solution is not to just change a constant in the code or to allow powerful participants to force out others. We are all Satoshi.”