96,231 Fake-Address Outputs Found in Bitcoin UTXO

Bitquery’s census scanned 965,135 Bitcoin blocks and identified 96,231 outputs that embed readable text where an address hash normally sits. Those entries appear spendable to nodes and therefore remain in the unspent transaction output (UTXO) database unless they are spent, representing roughly 3.2 BTC that cannot practically be spent because no matching private keys exist for the embedded text.

The fake-address outputs are separate from OP_RETURN entries. Bitquery classified 4,412,782 OP_RETURN outputs as readable text across the scanned history. OP_RETURN outputs store data in the blockchain’s history but do not need to be kept in the UTXO set that nodes use to validate spendable coins.

The census identified a short campaign from March 21–26, 2026 that included 13,062 OP_RETURN transactions carrying a two-sentence taunt naming a Bitcoin Core developer. Those transactions originated from 13,062 sending addresses across 579 blocks and incurred a combined 0.1014 BTC in fees. The taunt payload was 62 ASCII bytes.

Bitquery reported that the chain records the taunt text, the block timing, transaction inputs and fees, but does not record the payer, author or motive for those entries.

The firm noted that Bitcoin Core version 30.0, released in October 2025, changed default node relay policies by raising the -datacarriersize setting to 100,000 bytes and allowing multiple OP_RETURN outputs under an aggregate limit for relay and mining. Those policy defaults did not change consensus rules. Bitquery observed that messages longer than the prior 80-byte ceiling appeared only a few dozen times per month before the v30 release and rose into the thousands by February 2026. The report states easier relay under the new defaults is one possible explanation for the increase in longer OP_RETURN messages, while noting the timing alone does not establish causation.

The census has limitations: Bitquery did not have coinbase fields for 191,427 historical blocks and it did not count witness inscriptions. The totals therefore reflect the four measured channels rather than every location where text can appear on Bitcoin. Within the scan’s scope, the data distinguishes between entries that expand block history and entries that persist in current node state.