Transaction 4a5e1e4baab89f3a32518a88c31bc87f618f76673e2cc77ab2127b7afdeda33b

Block #0

2009-01-03 18:15:05 +0000 UTC (~15 years, 8 months ago)

BTC Burned: 🔥50 BTC🔥

Inputs

Coinbase: 04ffff001d0104455468652054696d65732030332f4a616e2f32303039204368616e63656c6c6f72206f6e206272696e6b206f66207365636f6e64206261696c6f757420666f722062616e6b73

Outputs

4104678afdb0fe5548271967f1a67130b7105cd6a828e03909a67962e0ea1f61deb649f6bc3f4cef38c4f35504e51ec112de5c384df7ba0b8d578a4c702b6bf11d5fac

04678afdb0fe5548271967f1a67130b7105cd6a828e03909a67962e0ea1f61deb649f6bc3f4cef38c4f35504e51ec112de5c384df7ba0b8d578a4c702b6bf11d5f OP_CHECKSIG pubkey

How did this transaction burn BTC?

Genesis Block Address (P2PK format)

The Genesis Block’s coinbase output was sent to this Pay-2-Pubkey (P2PK) address. In the original implementation of Bitcoin, the genesis block output was never added to the UTXO set and was unspendable. However, the public key associated with it is valid. A handful of transfers have subsequently been sent to that key, but remain unspendable until and unless Satohi’s keys are found.

As with many early Bitcoin transactions, some explorers misrepresent the address by forcefully converting it to a Pay-2-Pubkey-Hash (P2PKH) address, and may display it as 1A1zP1eP5QGefi2DMPTfTL5SLmv7DivfNa.

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Genesis Block UTXO Bug

In early implementations of Bitcoin, the 50 BTC output created in the genesis block was not added to the UTXO set. It is unknown if this was an intentional choice by Satoshi, or an oversight. As a result, it can never be spent and does not add to the supply of BTC. Fixing this would result in a hardfork, and has been deemed an unnecessary change.

This transation is also notable for containing Satoshi’s famous message and timestamp to the real-world.

The coinbase value can be converted back to the message as follows:

echo "04ffff001d0104455468652054696d65732030332f4a616e2f32303039204368616e63656c6c6f72206f6e206272696e6b206f66207365636f6e64206261696c6f757420666f722062616e6b73" | cut -c17- | xxd -r -p

Giving us the famous:

The Times 03/Jan/2009 Chancellor on brink of second bailout for banks

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Coinbase Reward Loss

For a variety of reasons, some blocks do not claim their full block reward.

The Bitcoin Protocol and reference Bitcoin Core implementation only require that the sum of all outputs in the coinbase transaction are less than or equal to block subsidy + transaction fees for that block. They don’t require that all of this entitlement is claimed by the miner.

Over the years, numerous misconfigurations and bugs in the systems used by miners to generate block templates have resulted in under-claiming of the block reward. Not only is this a loss to the miner, but it also reduces the total supply of Bitcoin that will ever be mined. There is no mechanism to claim unclaimed rewards after the block in which they were supposed to be claimed.

On rarer occasions, bugs in the reference implementation itself have led to losses - notably, the Genesis Block, Block 91722, and Block 91812 block rewards were claimed but destroyed due to bugs in the Bitcoin Core implementation at that time.

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Satoshi’s BTC

Ever since Satoshi stepped away, there has been no spending activity on any wallets that are known to be controlled by Satoshi.

The BTC held within these is widely considered to be lost and a net reduction in the amount of BTC available for everyone else.

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Raw Transaction

{
  "txid": "4a5e1e4baab89f3a32518a88c31bc87f618f76673e2cc77ab2127b7afdeda33b",
  "hash": "4a5e1e4baab89f3a32518a88c31bc87f618f76673e2cc77ab2127b7afdeda33b",
  "version": 1,
  "size": 204,
  "vsize": 204,
  "weight": 816,
  "locktime": 0,
  "vin": [
    {
      "txid": "",
      "vout": 0,
      "scriptSig": {
        "asm": "",
        "hex": ""
      },
      "prevout": {
        "generated": false,
        "height": 0,
        "value": "",
        "scriptPubKey": {
          "asm": "",
          "desc": "",
          "hex": "",
          "type": ""
        }
      },
      "coinbase": "04ffff001d0104455468652054696d65732030332f4a616e2f32303039204368616e63656c6c6f72206f6e206272696e6b206f66207365636f6e64206261696c6f757420666f722062616e6b73",
      "sequence": 4294967295
    }
  ],
  "vout": [
    {
      "value": "50.00000000",
      "n": 0,
      "scriptPubKey": {
        "asm": "04678afdb0fe5548271967f1a67130b7105cd6a828e03909a67962e0ea1f61deb649f6bc3f4cef38c4f35504e51ec112de5c384df7ba0b8d578a4c702b6bf11d5f OP_CHECKSIG",
        "desc": "pk(04678afdb0fe5548271967f1a67130b7105cd6a828e03909a67962e0ea1f61deb649f6bc3f4cef38c4f35504e51ec112de5c384df7ba0b8d578a4c702b6bf11d5f)#vlz6ztea",
        "hex": "4104678afdb0fe5548271967f1a67130b7105cd6a828e03909a67962e0ea1f61deb649f6bc3f4cef38c4f35504e51ec112de5c384df7ba0b8d578a4c702b6bf11d5fac",
        "type": "pubkey"
      }
    }
  ],
  "fee": "",
  "hex": "01000000010000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000ffffffff4d04ffff001d0104455468652054696d65732030332f4a616e2f32303039204368616e63656c6c6f72206f6e206272696e6b206f66207365636f6e64206261696c6f757420666f722062616e6b73ffffffff0100f2052a01000000434104678afdb0fe5548271967f1a67130b7105cd6a828e03909a67962e0ea1f61deb649f6bc3f4cef38c4f35504e51ec112de5c384df7ba0b8d578a4c702b6bf11d5fac00000000"
}