Coinbase has commemorated its public Nasdaq listing by posting a message to the Bitcoin blockchain.
Coinbase Refers to Relief Bill
Coinbase embedded a message that referred to a New York Times news headline from Mar. 10, 2021 that discussed the U.S. government’s trillion-dollar COVID-19 stimulus plan.
The headline reads: “NYTimes 10/Mar/2021 House Gives Final Approval to Biden’s $1.9T Pandemic Relief Bill.”
Coinbase asked the mining pool F2Pool to encode the message on block 679,187 of the Bitcoin blockchain, the first block mined after Coinbase was listed on the Nasdaq stock market.
The message is in Bitcoin’s coinbase data field, a feature that is not related to Coinbase in any way apart from the fact that the exchange was named after the technical term.
A Nod to Satoshi Nakamoto
Coinbase said the message that it published was a “nod to Satoshi,” the pseudonymous creator of Bitcoin who encoded a similar message on the Bitcoin’s first-ever block.
In 2009, Satoshi added a message into Bitcoin’s genesis block highlighting concerns around bank bailouts in the U.K. His note read: “The Times 03/Jan/2009 Chancellor on the brink of second bailout for banks.” That headline was from a London Times article published the same day Bitcoin’s first block was mined.
Reading between the lines, Coinbase’s message may be considered a criticism of government spending and a promotion of cryptocurrency as an alternative to mainstream money.
Disclaimer: At the time of writing this author held Cosmos.
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Author: Vishal Chawla
