Bitcoin mining pool F2Pool memorialized Coinbase’s first day of public trading with a nod to Bitcoin’s Genesis Block, encoding the text “NYTimes 10/Mar/21 House Gives Final Approval to Biden's $1.9T Pandemic Relief Bill” into the first Bitcoin block it mined yesterday.
The message was taken from a New York Times headline reporting a recent stimulus package that would necessitate rampant money printing. It echoes the message that Bitcoin’s pseudonymous creator Satoshi Nakamoto encoded into the coinbase data of Bitcoin’s first-ever (or “genesis”) block, which read “The Times 03/Jan/2009 Chancellor on brink of second bailout for banks” in reference to a similar headline.
Coinbase announced that it had asked F2Pool to embed the message as a tribute to Bitcoin history. It was encoded at block height 679,187 and is now an immutable part of the Bitcoin blockchain.
“On 03/Jan/2009, Satoshi coded a message into the Bitcoin Genesis Block,” Coinbase tweeted. “As a nod to Satoshi in our listing today, we asked F2Pool to embed a message in the Bitcoin blockchain.”
As one of the earliest portals for buying bitcoin, Coinbase has been instrumental in BTC adoption. Its public listing, which saw it reach a valuation around $85 billion, is a significant marker of Bitcoin’s growth since its Genesis Block. The fact that a recent headline so closely resembling the one that Satoshi chose could be embedded into the blockchain to mark this occasion is a sign that the world needs Bitcoin now as much as ever.