107 bitcoins were forever locked in an unusable address on the network, a kind of “cryptocurrency cemetery”. An operation valued at almost eight million dollars that triggered a wave of theories.
The most unusual operation in the history of cryptocurrencies was recorded this week on the bitcoin blockchain, where 5 addresses different sent funds to the same destination: 1111111111111111111114oLvT2.
This was not a conventional transfer, but rather a shipment to an address known to function as a digital dead end.
These five portfolios were without any movement since April 2014 and, after the transactions, they had a zero balance, says El Confidencial.
A temporal coincidence did not go unnoticed: all movements were included in the same blockwhich suggests that they may have been carried out by the same entity or through the same technical process.
The calls burn addresses or “burn addresses”, are valid bitcoin network addresses to which Is it possible to send fundsbut from which, in practice, Can’t move them.
They are chosen because they have artificial or technically anomalous patternswhich makes it extremely unlikely that anyone possesses the private key necessary to spend the bitcoins deposited there.
To recover these coins, it would be necessary to find a private key whose public key corresponded exactly to the address in question, a computationally difficult task. unfeasible with current technology, or break fundamental cryptographic assumptions of bitcoin. Therefore, although they will not disappear from the blockchain, these 107 bitcoins are considered, in practice, irrecoverable.
The address used was not unknown. Since 2010, it has received more than 385 thousand departures and never spent any. Before this operation, he accumulated around 700 bitcoins, but the new shipment increased his balance to more than 807 bitcoinsreinforcing its role as one of the great network cryptocurrency graveyards.
Burning bitcoin is not a new idea. Some projects used proof-of-burn to demonstrate the destruction of funds and issue other digital assets.
A Counterpartyfor example, created the your XCP in 2014 through proof-of-burn: participants sent bitcoins to an address considered unusable and the protocol issued XCP in exchange.
Bitcoin, however, does not have a native function to remove coins from circulation; these remain on the blockchain, but are, in practice, impossible to move.
A lack of a public explanation for the bizarre maneuver fueled all kinds of hypotheses and theories.
Some observers believe that could have been a mistake during the recovery of a wallet, a failure to generate change addresses or even an automated system that misinterpreted a technical reference associated with Counterparty.
Galaxy Research considered it unlikely that this was a ploy fiscalas the coins dated back to 2014 and their appreciation is evident. Scenarios such as the destruction of illicit fundsa decision made under coercion, religious motivations or a symbolic action.
So far, no one has claimed authorship — and the mystery persists.
