And Satoshi’s hidden message
To go straight to Satoshi’s hidden message in the first Bitcoin block would be a bit dull. There are so many other fields in the Bitcoin block that we can look at! Let’s take a quick look at them before decoding the Bitcoin genesis block message.
Have you ever looked at a Bitcoin block in one of those block explorers and wondered what’s the meaning of all those numbers, the hash, the height, and the reward?
A block in the blockchain is usually composed of the block hash, the previous block hash, time-stamp, nonce, a Merkle root, and/or a number of transactions. Once a block mined, broadcasted, and accepted by the other nodes in the blockchain, it can no longer be modified or deleted. Each block contains the hash of the previous block, forming a chain between them.
A block explorer is a user interface for users to look at the blockchain. It is a tool, often a web-based app, the allows users to view and explore all the information in a blockchain, including transactions, transaction history, addresses, blocks, etc.. Behind the scenes, the block explorer is connected to a full node with the entire ledger and works as a search engine for that ledger.
There’s an online block explorer for any major public blockchain, but we can see here an example of what information is shown in a Bitcoin block explorer. In this image, you can see the full structure of a block:
Hash: a SHA-256 hash of the data in the block.
Block height: it represents how many blocks were mined between the current block and the genesis block. Approximately 144 new Bitcoin blocks are mined every day.
Time-stamp: the exact time when the block was mined.
Previous block hash: although not shown in this image, every block also contains the previous block’s hash.
The number of transactions: corresponds to the number of transactions included in that specific block. Each block has a size limit — for example, 1MB, 1.3MB or 8MB — and the number of transactions that a block can include is a constraint to the block size. You can see the block size as the truck size. A small truck can carry 1000kg of cargo, while a big truck can handle 8000kg of cargo. In the same way, a bigger block can include more transactions.
Block reward: the Bitcoin block reward is at the moment 6.25 BTC. This is the miners’ reward as an incentive for them to contribute to the network and create blocks. The block reward started at 50. BTC per block in 2009, and it’s halved every four years or, to be more accurate, the halving occurs every 210,000 blocks. Because of the halving, the block reward will get to zero in 2140.
The reward is contained in each block’s Coinbase transaction, which is a unique transaction created to pay the block reward. For the block in this example, the 6.25 BTC reward would be equivalent to approximately USD 184 000.00. Not bad, huh?!
Fun fact (especially for the ones who did it): back in 2009 you could mine bitcoin blocks with your personal computer. If you have mined one single block, the 50 BTC reward would in 2021 be worth 2.3 Million dollars.
Fee reward: in addition to the block reward, fees are also paid to the miners. For example, in this block, the miners were paid approximately 0.7398 BTC, around USD 22 000.00.
Merkle root: the Merkle room comes from the Merkle tree, and it’s the hash of all the transactions in the block, organized in a tree. If any data in any transaction in the Merkle tree changes, the Merkle root would also change.
Number of transactions: how many transactions were included in the block.
Transaction volume: how much BTC was transacted in the block. In the example that we are looking at, approximately 7401 Bitcoins were transacted which is around USD 217 589 400.00 in the block above (in only 10 minutes!).
Nonce, difficulty and bits are related to mining, and we will have fun looking at it later in another chapter.
As you see, there’s a lot of information in a block explorer, and any person can also check the transactions included in each block in a completely open and transparent way.
As an example, let’s take a look at the Coinbase transaction included in the first block ever in the Bitcoin blockchain — the genesis block.
Oh, by the way, in this context, Coinbase refers to the transaction that is automatically created in every Bitcoin block to pay the reward to the block miner. We are not referring to Coinbases the exchange.
This was the first transaction ever. As you can see, there are no fees paid, and the block has more than 600 thousand confirmations which means that already more than 600 thousand blocks were mined on the top of this block. This block is well inside the blockchain onion. It also contains a pretty cool hidden message that you can check by yourself too!
The input of the transaction has the following HEX Sigscript: 5468652054696d65732030332f4a616e2f32303039204368616e63656c6c6f72206f6e206272696e6b206f66207365636f6e64206261696c6f757420666f722062616e6b73
Now we want to decode this message, converting it from this HEX string to ASCII (that is, human-readable text).
You can convert this HEX message to ASCII text in your command line by typing the code below. Just open your command prompt and copy/paste this:
echo 5468652054696d65732030332f4a616e2f32303039204368616e63656c6c6f72206f6e206272696e6b206f66207365636f6e64206261696c6f757420666f722062616e6b73 | xxd -r -p
How cool?!
This message was the headline of the London Times on the 3rd of January of 2009. Quite a special meaning for Bitcoin. This headline represents the failure of an entire financial system in 2009 which fueled the interest in Bitcoin, blockchain and decentralized systems.
Have you managed to decode the message too?
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Source: https://medium.com/geekculture/decoding-bitcoins-first-block-coinbase-transaction-aeefe87ceec0?source=rss——-8—————–cryptocurrency
