User Leaves Biblical Message in Block 666,666 of Bitcoin Blockchain

The 666,666th block in the Bitcoin blockchain has been mined. Since that is a bit of a special number, a user left a mysterious Biblical message in a transaction in the block.

It is an English quote with a Bible verse: “Do not be overcome by evil, but overcome evil with good – Romans 12:21”. That’s a quote from the New Testament. The unknown user does not tell the unknown user exactly how that text applies to the cryptocurrency. You can interpret that yourself.

The text was found in a transaction within block 666,666, which was mined on Tuesday night. That number has something symbolic; in the Bible 666 is the ‘number of the Beast’, so a satanic number. A good moment to leave a dubious message, users thought. It is possible to leave a message of up to eighty bytes with a transaction via OP_RETURN. That happened at least twice. One user left the message from Romans, another the message the Garden of Eden3D is Alive, containing a link to a 3d printer manufacturer. That’s a little less mystical…

The block was mined by the website btc.com, which let the event pass silently. Leaving messages in the blockchain happens more often. For example, blockchain creator Satoshi Nakamoto himself left a message in the Genesis block, the first block ever mined. In it he left a headline of a New York Times article: The Times 03/Jan/2009 Chancellor on brink of second bailout for banks.