Bitcoin’s 666,666th block was mined on Jan. 18 at 11:28 p.m. UTC by mining pool BTC.com.
Whoever was responsible for producing it encoded a chilling message from the Bible that reads:
Do not be overcome by evil, but overcome evil with good — Romans 12:21.
The line comes from the Epistle to the Romans, the sixth book in the New Testament. It was embedded in the OP_RETURN script that allows storing up to 80 bytes of data.
Notably, the output addresses also contain the words “God” and “Bible.”
Bitcoin’s most famous secret messages
Messages are usually left on the blockchain withing a coinbase transaction, the first transaction that occurs in every block. One is able to encode up to 100 bytes of arbitrary data.
The genesis block — which was mined on Jan. 3, 2009 — contains the iconic The Times headline about bank bailouts that was encoded by none other than Satoshi Nakamoto himself:
The Times 03/Jan/2009 Chancellor on brink of second bailout for banks.
The theme of excessive government spending also persisted in 2020, and block 629,999, the last one with a reward of 12.5 BTC, says that the Fed’s plan exceeded its effort in 2008:
NYTimes 09/Apr/2020 With $2.3T Injection, Fed’s Plan Far Exceeds 2008.
Bitcoin’s 659,678th block also immortalized the Reuters headline about the cryptocurrency reaching a new all-time high against the backdrop of the plummeting U.S. dollar.
Reuters 01/Dec/2020 Dollar plummets on U.S. stimulus hopes; Bitcoin hits all-time peak.
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Bitcoin as a new religion
Bible references aside, Bitcoin itself is deemed as the first religion of the 21st century by Bloomberg’s Joe Weisenthal.
In his recent newsletter, he argues that it has a prophet (Satosh), a sacred text (the White Paper), original saints of the likes of cryptographer Hal Finney, and even special holidays like the halving.
