Bitcoin whitepaper Updated +Created
Released by Satoshi Nakamoto on the early mailing list discussions where Bitcoin was announced.
More conveniently available on bitcoin.org: bitcoin.org/bitcoin.pdf nowadays, except when it was down for a few years due to our master Craig Steven Wright.
Base58 messages Updated +Created
Bitcoin addresses are by convention expressed in Base58, which is a human readable binary-to-text encoding invented by Bitcoin.
It is a bit like Base64, but obsessed with eliminating characters that look like one another in popular but stupid fonts like capital "I" and lower case ell "l". As such, any embedded text is rather obfuscated due to this limitations, and people often resort to leet-like replacements such as '1' to represent 'I'.
This seems to be one of the earliest strategies used to encode messages into the Bitcoin blockchain. The first known example appears in 2011. Then starting November 2011, a large number of messages were inscribed n short successsion, presumably by a single person or small group.
The interest in Base58 encoding might have initially arisen with people's desire to have "vanity addresses", that is Bitcoin addresses that have real words in them, much like vanity plates or vanity numbers. Such addresses with long words in them are hard to find while keeping the address spendable, because they have to correspond to a private key. An extreme notable example is:which contains the awkward 13 letter word:
embarrassable
in it. TODO: proof that it is pendable?
Perhaps inspired by this, some people also decided to use Base58 addresses as a way to create more general unspendable inscriptions, even even though the method is much more clumsy and complicated than P2FKHS. There is however a certain art to working under limitations.
Figure 1. . Although it is not solely focused on inscriptions and may also contain functional burn addresses, it is likely that the methods of Khatib/Legout capture the overall trend of base58 inscription counts.
These messages were originally found with: github.com/cirosantilli/bitcoin-inscription-indexer#payload-size-out-utxo-2vals which tracks the largest transactions with unspent outputs.
Bitcoin Burn Addresses: Unveiling the Permanent Losses and Their Underlying Causes later revealed many new ones.
Finding Base58 messages is intrinsically hard for a few reasons
  • the words may be garbled by Base58 leet
  • only very small ammounts of data can be encoded at a time, and all of it contains ASCII, so you can't just "find all long ASCII strings" as we started doing for other ASCII inscriptions a la strings -n20; you have to use some dictionary as a basis
  • the Base58 does not show up raw on the blockchain, as it is just a human representation for the actual binary data that does, so you can't just strings the blockchain, you have to parse it
The interesting following transactions contain base58 encoded messages on addresses, sorted chronologically, and heighlighted either due to their earliness or historical or artistic quality:
Related:
Interesting AtomSea & EMBII uploads Updated +Created
tx e3e37ed5c1de2631c147bd39429e42ff634e95b7d72423bc32d6c6b9d8eef8ee (2014-07-01):
For my first official Journal entry I've decided to archive some old poetry. Here are a few of the computational poems I've created using cyphers.
Figure 1.
Shiemaa&Vincent.jpg
. Source.
Message:
"Even if we tried to do it on purpose, never would have we succeeded." My beloved Vincent.
TODO identify Shiemaa and Vincent.
Figure 2.
BikeLady.jpg
. Source.
This seems to be a novel work uploaded by its creator artist Allen Vandever according to EMBII.[ref].
Figure 3.
Arecibo_message.svg
. Source.
An "artificially" colored visualization of the Arecibo message ripped from Wikipedia: en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Arecibo_message.svg (with attribution).
The cool thing about this image is that it highlights the striking parallels between the encoding of the Arecibo message with crypto graffiti, because in both cases people were creating undocumented new ways of communicating with strangers on a new medium in those early blockchain days.
The associated message contains the Arecibo message as ASCII 0's and 1's. When properly cut at the newlines, they draw the message as ASCII art, as the original Arecibo encoding intends, here's a version with the 0's replaced by spaces to make it more readabale:
      1 1 1 1
  1 1     1 1       1
1   1   1   1  1 11  1
1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1  1  1

            11
          11 1
          11 1
          1 1 1
          11111

11    111   11    11
1             11  1
11 1   11   11    11 1
11111 11111 11111 11111

    1                 1

    1                 1
11111             11111

11    11    111   11
1       1         1
11 1    11   111  11 1
11111 11111 11111 11111

    1      11         1
          11
    1     11          1
11111     11      11111
          11
  1        1        1
    1      11       1
    11    11      1
      11   1    11
          11  11
      11   1    11
    11    11      1
    1      1        1
  1       11        1
  1        11        1
  1         1       1
  1       1       1
    1            11
    11        11
  1   111 1 11
  1       1
  1     11111
  1    1 111 1  1 11 11
      1  111  1  111111
1 111    111     11 111
          1 1     111 11
  1      1 1     111111
  1      1 1     11
  1     11 11

  111     1
  111 1 1   1 1 1 1 1 1
  111         1 1 1 1
              1 1
        11111
      111111111
    111       111
    11           11
  11 1         1 11
  11  11       11  11
  1   1 1     1 1   1
  1   1  1   1  1   1
      1   1 1   1
      1    1    1
      1         1
        1  1 1
  1111  11111 1  1111
Figure 4.
He sleeps in a temple.jpg
. tx 460ed23bea89176cdfe18e13fce51ad5386ad8e3e1f7d6f5b4711b3be97b0502 block 360565 (2015-06-12). EMBII claimed on Twitter that he took this photo in Auckland, New Zealand. The shop on the right corner has a sign that starts with "Bo" and searching for "Auckland Bo" gave us the "The body shop" on the corner of Queen Street and Darby Street. Some things changed between 2015 and 2024, notably the bench is gone and the shop on the left corner changed, but we can go back in time in Google Street View to 2015 which further confirms the location.
Figure 5.
PIA17563.jpg
. Source.
Associated message:
NASA: A purple nebula, in honor of #Prince, who passed away today. Image: Crab #Nebula, as Seen by Herschel and #Hubble Image credit: ESA/Herschel/PACS/MESS Key Programme Supernova Remnant Team; #NASA, ESA and Allison Loll/Jeff Hester (Arizona State University) #PIA17563
Figure 6.
Dr_Craig_Wright.jpg
. Source.
The image is present e.g. at: www.kitguru.net/channel/jon-martindale/australian-man-claims-he-is-satoshi-nakamoto-bitcoin-creator/ It was inscribed about two months after Craig publicly claimed that he is Satoshi.
This is a relatively unusual AtomSea & EMBII upload as it does not have the common toplevel transaction, everything, text + image fits into a single transaction. This is perhaps why the image is relatively low resolution to have a smaller size.
Figure 7.
YellowRobot.jpg
. Source.
Photography by EMBII, original art by TODO.
The associated message reads:
Chiharu and I found this little yellow robot while exploring Chicago. It will be covered by tar or eventually removed but this tribute will remain. N 41.880778 E -87.629210
This is one of Ciro's favorite AtomSea & EMBII uploads. This is the cutest thing ever, and perfectly encapsules the "medium as an artform" approach to blockchain art. More Chiharu stalking at: ILoveYouMore.jpg.
At twitter.com/EMBII4U/status/1615389973343268871 EMBII announced that he would be giving off shares of that image on a Bitcoin-based NFT sale system he's making called Sup!?, and in December 2023 gave some shares to Ciro Santilli. Amen.
Other possibly novel EMBII street photography:
Audio: