Incoming links: Inside Job (2010)
Tribute to computer security researcher Len Sassaman, who killed himself on 2011-07-03, starting with an ASCII art portrait followed by text.
Because it comes so early in the blockchain, and because it is the first ASCII art on the blochain as far as we can see, and because is so well done, this is by far the most visible ASCII art of the Bitcoin blockchain.
Present at tx 930a2114cdaa86e1fac46d15c74e81c09eee1d4150ff9d48e76cb0697d8e1d72. It does not show well on Bitcoin Inscription Indexer however with rationale described at: github.com/cirosantilli/bitcoin-inscription-indexer/tree/3f53e152ec9bb0d070dbcb8f9249d92f89effa70#smart-newline-joining
But it can be seen at on bitcoinStrings.com at: bitcoinstrings.com/blk00003.txt.
Transaction: www.blockchain.com/btc/tx/930a2114cdaa86e1fac46d15c74e81c09eee1d4150ff9d48e76cb0697d8e1d72 from 2011-07-30, a few weeks after the suicide.
Discussion: bitcoin.stackexchange.com/questions/3370/in-which-block-was-len-sassaman-memorialised/101276#101276
Created by famous computer security researcher Dan Kaminsky and Travis Goodspeed, presumably this other security researcher, evidence:
- signature on the tribute
- the art is highlighted at Video 1. "Black OPS of TCP/IP by Dan Kaminsky (2011)", which happened very few days after the art was uploaded to the blockchain, thus making it exceedingly unlikely that someone else could have done it
"Bernanke" is a reference to Ben Bernanke, who was one of the economists in power in the US Government during the financial crisis of 2007-2008, and much criticized by some, as shown for example in the documentary Inside Job (2010). As hinted in the Genesis block message, the United States Government bailed out many big banks that were going to go bankrupt with taxpayer money, even though it was precisly those banks that had started the crisis through their reckless investment, thus violating principles of the free market and business accountability. This was one of the motivations for the creation Bitcoin, which could reduce government power over economic policy.
It is worth mentioning that there do exist some slightly earlier "artistic" inscriptions in the form Punycode inscription in the Namecoin blockchain, but as far as we've seen, the are all trivial compared to
BitLen in terms of artistic value/size.---BEGIN TRIBUTE---
#./BitLen
:::::::::::::::::::
:::::::.::.::.:.:::
:.: :.' ' ' ' ' : :
:.:'' ,,xiW,"4x, ''
: ,dWWWXXXXi,4WX,
' dWWWXXX7" `X,
lWWWXX7 __ _ X
:WWWXX7 ,xXX7' "^^X
lWWWX7, _.+,, _.+.,
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WW",X: X,
"7^^Xl. _(_x7'
l ( :X: __ _
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, R7X, "^447^
R, "4RXk, _, ,
TWk "4RXXi, X',x
lTWk, "4RRR7' 4 XH
:lWWWk, ^" `4
::TTXWWi,_ Xll :..
=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=
LEN "rabbi" SASSAMA
1980-2011
Len was our friend.
A brilliant mind,
a kind soul, and
a devious schemer;
husband to Meredith
brother to Calvin,
son to Jim and
Dana Hartshorn,
coauthor and
cofounder and
Shmoo and so much
more. We dedicate
this silly hack to
Len, who would have
found it absolutely
hilarious.
--Dan Kaminsky,
Travis Goodspeed
P.S. My apologies,
BitCoin people. He
also would have
LOL'd at BitCoin's
new dependency upon
ASCII BERNANKE
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----END TRIBUTE----Code 1.
Len Sassaman tribute
. 
Official portrait of Ben Bernanke (2008)
Source. Reference image from Wikipedia for the ASCII art.
Black OPS of TCP/IP by Dan Kaminsky (2011)
Source. Presented at the BlackHat 2011 conference. Dan unveils the Len memorial at the given timestamp around 8:41. The presentation was done on 2011-08-03 or 04, so very few days after the upload to the blockchain.From the JSON transaction we understand the encoding format:So it is really encoded one line at a time in the
"out":[
{
"spent":false,
"tx_index":0,
"type":0,
"addr":"1CqKQ2EqUscMkeYRFMmgepNGtfKynXzKW7",
"value":1000000,
"n":0,
"script":"76a91481ccb4ee682bc1da3bda70176b7ccc616a6ba9da88ac"
},
{
"spent":false,
"tx_index":0,
"type":0,
"addr":"157sXa7duStAvq3dPLWe7J449sgh47eHzw",
"value":1000000,
"n":1,
"script":"76a9142d2d2d424547494e20545249425554452d2d2d2088ac"
},
...
{
"spent":false,
"tx_index":0,
"type":0,
"addr":"157sXYpjvAyEJ6TdVFaVzmoETAQnHB6FGU",
"value":1000000,
"n":77,
"script":"76a9142d2d2d2d454e4420545249425554452d2d2d2d2088ac"
}script of the transaction outputs.