Topics (115k) Articles (117k) Users (639) Discussions (366) Comments (429) New article
New Updated Top Announced A-Z
Cool data embedded in the Bitcoin blockchain / Quotes and threes by Ciro Santilli 40 Updated 2025-07-16
View more
Starting tx 2f201c8518c7b012c03c2c82e40e86f6aaf616ea5fbe22570aac9d2c6611cb68 (2023-03-11), the chain is flooded with ASCII transactions containing many repeated double quotes " and digits 3, with some other characters interspersed in them without any clear pattern e.g. the first one:
""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""jk""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""'}""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""/D""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""q1""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""XK""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""
TODO what is up with that?
In that first trasaction the quotes appear as part of a multisig output script.
Read the full article
Cool data embedded in the Bitcoin blockchain / Encrypted data by Ciro Santilli 40 Updated 2025-07-16
View more
Transactions such as tx fe37c7eee73be5fda91068dbe0eb74a68495a3fc7185712b8417032db7fc9c5e (2015-01-15) starting with
U2FsdGVkX1/4iSjLxQ5epo8eRSCOQLGgAsn1CucGii27k8ZyC7Jz6wxhYcevVmxi
6Q4ZFN04WDN0UhKqYardgQf26oeBMURupduDd0ZozxlgMrBkFOCaARqU7RABVWDO
/ruPUcOY0VC8p4lrMNqSdqvN7y6OWwOSH3c0duumZfFNZs9+BbtKCxtaqR5+RkUI
are Base64 encoded. Running them through base64 -d leads to starting output bytes Salted__ which as mentioned at security.stackexchange.com/questions/124312/decrypting-binary-code-from-a-base64-string is OpenSSL encrypted data. So hwerever we see the start:
U2FsdGVkX1/
we might as well give up. That string appears 26 times in our data currently, between 6c091e6152b83ec0df8d0d87c7c5f3da72a3328ed3a5d91768ba0ab899c16b9d (2014-09-28) and 84189c82995db355e92e37f8cfe8a9274e9a5d157f1f1658067672e707469a09 (2019-07-06)
The following via cryptograffiti.info get marked by file as "openssl enc'd data with salted password, Base64 encoded":
  • ad3d8a0a5d57114b1780341cb5104284f029bb01b1b3558f7c7b9ce51eb67e18
  • 1cd0c631f444d664601468f644b70e0166019a54d8678de51310139b6c8b2bd7
  • ccc3fb2c9cb1c640b76645a8658693066fd63433ab17c318691ad5bd62601c0e
  • e6eb0cb8268a9b3d012d2957b32d4b28ccc3317593f54f4bfe4b387326588bd2
  • c40e322b198b715accc4a67fad244ed131b8cef0785070e06d10d56c4ab389f2
  • 37a261ac6dbf59e3c9673a22028bcdbdd08926a9d32134ab8fba0897f6dcd196
  • f1aa516fe00ec2156f16fcb9da422f6cbcd141e8e58c895d8bc37b4ad2fd714e
  • 7faf29c7dd7d9cc6d099c262f7ec7edd7fc768276482ad66ceefdd814f1d38ab
  • 69cac244051661cc0b8b08905af5ab312a1282b68c932e5d1e3c46ad47ff0f7a
  • 1773c39f844951b7169dc34aa0c72aa7b43cae6a103ed1223527ef0f4deec2a9
  • b1d4bf3fc46e63c995ad4299f3576340077bc810dfa5c502d1c068460d54bc98
  • a52625837741902e1dd24de3dbd3b948d6e0907ad3fc957c13cdf53fa2c3b9ac
  • 4ca742813eaccef009e24e92150dda06540c2ac81782f1569b1ebb3179a413d2
  • 6c3bab5fc6e6352c62a16ab0f47394845aa41a2c0b25e1a1073a4aeac150e03d
  • 20b8feef3d293a0dd79e3c169fceb1217465502a523acbab903a7eb0cd183709
  • b7863215b99567bc9e71155b13f3c5f26d15eac52493ee2e834129460ffd2aec
  • 2c8961a64bb11d5855790085f51007273467f7ef862137215c9f1d958dcb6c57
  • bed542957bdd8f644a4fcd671a8c66a5cc5d6168f9fa60d37177703e77558eee
  • 3e45af9d828754d5a38c86636a070610f6e828482718c4a597d272d41a3e31fa
  • a13af4817e85cacce3cfb445001e2fb2f56cdc30f78348fd2580bf8f4c84dc55
  • 87a10f6bc65a08067b2544e46be00d4af62c0cfed3ae0b165d5eedaff09d81da
  • ef55826befabbe9dcd44d87fc385d600dd4c4cba3346cde53d8c591960e9b4dc
  • 5d30f63131dcf2b4d001b4ab530e18cc6ff8ffd16cade055ff4587a59b84e420
  • 8a75514829b6e30b9fea434eef77b1589ff3f4bdfc0056bd087efbfb8314eb59
  • e2be1062c9d43cc6ed43de6f7a40c728d2d92ed0325abde24ff3300cf3ae136a
  • 8fe5c2679237e36c74fda04bb083f732c4afdd06af81121b1d7b4d5bd677135f
  • 7f099f094d8d51105d8655253d45ebddf1c88b9e138c302a65d2878a237e620c
  • 0fc4b3a305e2a7faa2e7d9c2f23d23d626e9e75f1f2a37133f283334b314645b
  • 933b321e7b7144ed5e4e1750f944be9ed10293633d9b288bf05febdeb9dc40a3
  • 6215486bc024dea7991b142e50e111c4063e1db4a867514612b8e794b8ef5635
  • fc0613e11269962d97373b10e310f451fb76c7bb477ba1afb45773c44851e9ed
  • ab51d2c037b4625394c68706da83c26bad751018d2a3e377a51988bd8ee18647
  • 7ca9b337172f4feff67a0ecbfbd76798265e08c6ebe989a319883c695d756247
  • 0f0b477e456dcf286d7262497bcd5b3b6a3ce89f81761c2f59ff702539ab6183
  • a320152fd59426c8853dd781db9d682f89755953b39a653f9e9c9628a5fce7fb
  • e96221da774fb52d24dda1b83b14c99085eb4befac64691722c56eb750562d68
  • a7a5ca68dd340dd42bd5c91e0febe68e5fd2fb993da2992661183eaafe8ad89e
  • 64e9d95e2333cfd155506199c8d926649e63a98dbc83c1221b8dd1580937b942
blockchain.news/news/mysterious-bitcoin-inscriptions-a-puzzle-in-raw-binary-data mentions a huge 9 MB Ordinal ruleset inscription that no-one managed to decode, and so people suspect is encrypted data. Seems to be split across transactions, starting at fed7de7fb75a3fe3c1acbbd8e19a4c540fb368474c8834e4ddb1d5bab764a767
Read the full article
Cool data embedded in the Bitcoin blockchain / Prayer wars by Ciro Santilli 40 Updated 2025-07-16
View more
Figure 1.
Saint Eligius by Petrus Christus
. Source. Off-chain image for illustration. Eligius pool is named after Saint Eligius, patron of goldsmiths and miners[ref]
These are some of the earliest inscriptions in the blockchain, and therefore extremelly visible.
Although the prayer verses appear contiguous in ASCII dumps, Eligius was not actually mining every block: it is just that in those early days, miners still hadn't started adding advertisement messages to every block, so only Eligius shows up and appears contiguous.
At some point, opponents noticed these messages, and started adding atheist mockery graffiti replies, which appear interspersed in ASCII dumps with the prayer.
The first prayer is the Latin version of the Divine Praises, a Catholic prayer composed in 1797 in Italian by Luigi Felici for the purpose of making reparation after saying or hearing sacrilege or blasphemy. Luke claims he was referring to anything in particular that came prior in the blockchain: twitter.com/LukeDashjr/status/1749182637569122434. There arent many earlier inscriptions at all to refer to in any case! The prayer and correspondong interrupts (in transaction outputs, not by other miners) ordered by block are:
  • 139690 (2011-08-05) prayer: "Eligius/Benedictus Deus. Benedictum Nomen Sanctum eius."
  • 139717 prayer: "Eligius/Benedictus Deus. Benedictum Nomen Sanctum eius.'
  • 139758 interruption: ***************************************************. This is not a Coinbase message: www.blockchain.com/explorer/transactions/btc/23befff6eea3dded0e34574af65c266c9398e7d7d9d07022bf1cd526c5cdbc94. This Bitcoin input script appears to spend a standard P2PKH output, but it first adds an extra value to the stack which contains the ***.
  • 139792 prayer: "Benedictus Iesus Christus, verus Deus et verus homo.'
  • 139831 prayer: "Benedictum Nomen Iesu.'
  • 139838 (2011-08-06) interruption: "I LIKE TURTLES" (tx 78eb16507b3d3df615e3b474e853db4667f4b11954ec6d918b1ded0fca7ad25a)
  • 138898 prayer: "Benedictum Cor eius sacratissimum."
  • 139904 prayer: "Benedictus Sanguis eius pretiosissimus."
  • 139921 prayer: "Benedictus Iesus in sanctissimo altaris Sacramento."
  • 139942 prayer: "Benedictus Sanctus Spiritus, Paraclitus."
  • 139954 interrupion: "aC-C-C-COMBO BREAKER" (tx 138c024a76df99ecafd2236d5429cf574b7778a3c6508bd83f116c832f3c6980)
  • 139960 prayer: "Benedictus Sanctus Spiritus, Paraclitus."
  • 139977 prayer: "Benedicta excelsa Mater Dei, Maria sanctissima."
  • 139990 (2011-08-06) prayer: "Benedicta sancta eius et immaculata Conceptio."
Then comes:
and various others + output message interruptions.
Then at last come the first miner message interruptions. Luke explained on Twitter[ref] that they were also made by Eligius pool, as there was a system in which contributors besides Luke could submit their own strings:
followed by more prayers and interruptions such as tx ec92d245822fa1ff862f3314b9102f36fe1eb8bc055865674c75323540aedef6:
FFS Luke-Jr leave the blockchain alone!
Oh, and God isn't real
The last Luke prayer appears to be on block 143822 (2011-09-03)
... the Lord of the harvest, that he send forth labourers into his harvest.
Then there is a bit of radio silence, until finally Slush Pool started self advertising for the first time on block 163970 (2012-01-26):
/P2SH/BIP16/slush/R,
They had been mining for a long time by then (December 2010 according to en.bitcoin.it/wiki/Slush_Pool), but this is when they decided to add a human readable ASCII message as well.
From then on, miner messages would be forever polluted with ads, and Luke's multi-miner message feat would never again be reproduced.
The non-obvious interruptions are all well known memes/anime references:
Bibliography:
Read the full article
Cool data embedded in the Bitcoin blockchain / Illegal content of block 229k by Ciro Santilli 40 Updated 2025-07-16
View more
These can be viewed at bitcoinstrings.com/blk00052.txt and are mostly commented on the "Wikileaks cablegate data" section of Hidden surprises in the Bitcoin blockchain by Ken Shirriff (2014).
Soon after block 229991 uploaded the Satoshi uploader, several interesting files were added to the blockchain using the uploader, and notably some containing content that might be illegal in certain countries, as a test to see if this type of content would make the Bitcoin blockchain illegal or not:
So basically, this was the first obviously illegal block attempt.
None of this content is particularly eye-popping for Ciro Santilli's slightly crazy freedom of speech standards, and as of 2021, the Bitcoin blockchain likely hasn't become illegal anywhere yet due to freedom of speech concerns.
Furthermore, it is likely much easier to find much worse illegal content by browsing any uncensored Onion service search engine for 2 minutes.
Ciro Santilli estimates that perhaps the uploader didn't upload child pornography, which is basically the apex of illegality of this era, because they were afraid that their identities would one day be found.
Bibliography:
Read the full article
Cool data embedded in the Bitcoin blockchain / ASCII porn by Ciro Santilli 40 Updated 2025-07-16
View more
All found so far are also reproduced at: asciiart.website/index.php?art=people/naked%20ladies therefore not blockchain original.
Some of the very first ASCII art present in the blockchain besides BitLen is porn. Surprising?
Read the full article
Cool data embedded in the Bitcoin blockchain / Mt. Gox' shutdown by Ciro Santilli 40 Updated 2025-07-16
View more
Mt. Gox was the first Cryptocurrency exchange in existence, and when it shutdowon in Febrauary 2014 because the website was crap and they got hacked, some people were not happy at all about their missing funds!
tx 0540b5dda23ee870330c6b1e18a88c592cf8d847c47f1dc1d5328f46115b12b3 (2014-02-25)
2014-02-25: The day Mt.Gox shut down. Farewell, may even you rest in peace!
tx c00a4a04905a2e8d8dee8a768165aa6bdf842413a8a648462a6349db89cd77f2 (2014-02-27) has an ASCII art of a seal, TODO understand meme:
        o
      / |
      | \
  .   |  |
.'\`  | \|
  | \_/ \ \
  \____/\/
<3 You Seals!
There are also a few Base58 messages referring to Mt Gox, the nicest and most expensive one being to burn addres:which as of 2025 holds 0.014537 BTC burnt on:
Many of these transactions also contain other quick messages, e.g.:
Read the full article
Cool data embedded in the Bitcoin blockchain / 503: Bitcoin over capacity by Ciro Santilli 40 Updated 2025-07-16
View more
Starting tx a87d406fae047258a12923b3c11a797a5765bd8f868df5c7e9b1cead0e92c9c1: the message:
503: Bitcoin over capacity!
appears about 13 thousand times. WTF happened?
Read the full article
Cool data embedded in the Bitcoin blockchain / Politics by Ciro Santilli 40 Updated 2025-07-16
Read the full article
Cool data embedded in the Bitcoin blockchain / China by Ciro Santilli 40 Updated 2025-07-16
View more
Read the full article
Cool data embedded in the Bitcoin blockchain / Interesting transactions by Ciro Santilli 40 Updated 2025-07-16
View more
This is about transactions that are interesting not because of their inscriptions, but for some other reason, such as transaction size, etc.
Read the full article
Cool data embedded in the Bitcoin blockchain / Hidden surprises in the Bitcoin blockchain by Ken Shirriff (2014) by Ciro Santilli 40 Updated 2025-07-16
View more
Ken Shirriff is a cool dude, he's done some collabs with Marc Verdiell in electronics restoration.
Read the full article
Cool data embedded in the Bitcoin blockchain / A Quantitative Analysis of the Impact of Arbitrary Blockchain Content on Bitcoin by Matzutt et al. (2018) by Ciro Santilli 40 Updated 2025-07-16
View more
fc18.ifca.ai/preproceedings/6.pdf
Semi-boring academic overview, but without reproducibility, or in a way that is too hidden for Ciro to have the patience to find it out.
Claims 1600 files found.
Mentions some upload mechanisms, notably AtomSea & EMBII and Satoshi uploader.
Read the full article
Cool data embedded in the Bitcoin blockchain / Other blockchains by Ciro Santilli 40 Updated 2025-07-16
View more
Read the full article
Cool data embedded in the Bitcoin blockchain / Incoming links by Ciro Santilli 40 Updated 2025-07-26
View more
By others:
Read the full article
Bitcoin inscription bibliography by Ciro Santilli 40 Updated 2025-07-16
View more
Read the full article
Madelung energy ordering rule by Ciro Santilli 40 Updated 2025-07-16
View more
Looking at the energy level of the Schrödinger equation solution for the hydrogen atom, you would guess that for multi-electron atoms that only the principal quantum number would matter, azimuthal quantum number getting filled randomly.
However, orbitals energies for large atoms don't increase in energy like those of hydrogen due to electron-electron interactions.
In particular, the following would not be naively expected:
Read the full article
Pauli equation by Ciro Santilli 40 Updated 2025-07-16
View more
Bibliography:
Read the full article
Data Insertion in Bitcoin's Blockchain by Andrew Sward, Vecna OP_0 and Forrest Stonedahl by Ciro Santilli 40 Updated 2025-07-16
View more
Read the full article
Spin (physics) by Ciro Santilli 40 Updated 2025-07-16
View more
Spin is one of the defining properties of elementary particles, i.e. number that describes how an elementary particle behaves, much like electric charge and mass.
Possible values are half integer numbers: 0, 1/2, 1, 3/2, and so on.
The approach shown in this section: Section "Spin comes naturally when adding relativity to quantum mechanics" shows what the spin number actually means in general. As shown there, the spin number it is a direct consequence of having the laws of nature be Lorentz invariant. Different spin numbers are just different ways in which this can be achieved as per different Representation of the Lorentz group.
Video 1. "Quantum Mechanics 9a - Photon Spin and Schrodinger's Cat I by ViaScience (2013)" explains nicely how:
Video 1.
Quantum Mechanics 9a - Photon Spin and Schrodinger's Cat I by ViaScience (2013)
Source.
Video 2.
Quantum Spin - Visualizing the physics and mathematics by Physics Videos by Eugene Khutoryansky (2016)
Source.
Video 3.
Understanding QFT - Episode 1 by Highly Entropic Mind (2023)
. Source. Maybe he stands a chance.
Read the full article
A Quantitative Analysis of the Impact of Arbitrary Blockchain Content on Bitcoin by Ciro Santilli 40 Updated 2025-07-16
View more
fc18.ifca.ai/preproceedings/6.pdf
Read the full article

Pinned article: Introduction to the OurBigBook Project

Welcome to the OurBigBook Project! Our goal is to create the perfect publishing platform for STEM subjects, and get university-level students to write the best free STEM tutorials ever.
Everyone is welcome to create an account and play with the site: ourbigbook.com/go/register. We belive that students themselves can write amazing tutorials, but teachers are welcome too. You can write about anything you want, it doesn't have to be STEM or even educational. Silly test content is very welcome and you won't be penalized in any way. Just keep it legal!
Video 1.
Intro to OurBigBook
. Source.
We have two killer features:
  1. topics: topics group articles by different users with the same title, e.g. here is the topic for the "Fundamental Theorem of Calculus" ourbigbook.com/go/topic/fundamental-theorem-of-calculus
    Articles of different users are sorted by upvote within each article page. This feature is a bit like:
    • a Wikipedia where each user can have their own version of each article
    • a Q&A website like Stack Overflow, where multiple people can give their views on a given topic, and the best ones are sorted by upvote. Except you don't need to wait for someone to ask first, and any topic goes, no matter how narrow or broad
    This feature makes it possible for readers to find better explanations of any topic created by other writers. And it allows writers to create an explanation in a place that readers might actually find it.
    Figure 1.
    Screenshot of the "Derivative" topic page
    . View it live at: ourbigbook.com/go/topic/derivative
    Video 2.
    OurBigBook Web topics demo
    . Source.
  2. local editing: you can store all your personal knowledge base content locally in a plaintext markup format that can be edited locally and published either:
    This way you can be sure that even if OurBigBook.com were to go down one day (which we have no plans to do as it is quite cheap to host!), your content will still be perfectly readable as a static site.
    Figure 2.
    You can publish local OurBigBook lightweight markup files to either https://OurBigBook.com or as a static website
    .
    Figure 3.
    Visual Studio Code extension installation
    .
    Figure 4.
    Visual Studio Code extension tree navigation
    .
    Figure 5.
    Web editor
    . You can also edit articles on the Web editor without installing anything locally.
    Video 3.
    Edit locally and publish demo
    . Source. This shows editing OurBigBook Markup and publishing it using the Visual Studio Code extension.
    Video 4.
    OurBigBook Visual Studio Code extension editing and navigation demo
    . Source.
  3. https://raw.githubusercontent.com/ourbigbook/ourbigbook-media/master/feature/x/hilbert-space-arrow.png
  4. Infinitely deep tables of contents:
    Figure 6.
    Dynamic article tree with infinitely deep table of contents
    .
    Descendant pages can also show up as toplevel e.g.: ourbigbook.com/cirosantilli/chordate-subclade
All our software is open source and hosted at: github.com/ourbigbook/ourbigbook
Further documentation can be found at: docs.ourbigbook.com
Feel free to reach our to us for any help or suggestions: docs.ourbigbook.com/#contact
Site settings