The German government has ruffled the feathers of the crypto community over the past week, moving vast amounts of seized bitcoin to exchanges.
The transfers, coupled with Mt. Gox repayments have created a jumpy market, with bitcoin dropping to its lowest levels since February, according to data from CoinMarketCap.
In protest, one Bitcoin user decided to show their contempt, sending an inscription to the German government’s address that read ‘STEUERN SIND RAUB,’ which Google translates as ‘TAXES ARE ROBBERY.’
The inscription was spotted by crypto analytics platform Arkham.
Read more: German MP Joana Cotar holds BTC and says the government should stop selling
‘Inscriptions’ are a way of including arbitrary data within Bitcoin transactions, which is then permanently ‘inscribed’ onto a Satoshi, the smallest denomination of bitcoin. The practice took off last year, putting pressure on the blockchain as Ordinals ‘spam’ caused transaction fees to outpace mining rewards.
However, including political messages within the Bitcoin blockchain is nothing new.
Bitcoin’s first, or ‘genesis,’ block contained the now famous message ‘The Times 03/Jan/2009 Chancellor on brink of second bailout for banks,’ likely intended as an indictment of the failings of the legacy financial system which inspired Bitcoin’s creation.
On-chain trolling is common on Ethereum, too, where BlackRock’s BUIDL fund became a magnet for a barrage of meme coins and JPEGs of CEO Larry Fink calling to ‘Send it.’ The fund’s address was even registered with the Ethereum Name Service as bigdickfink.eth.
Since its launch, attention has dropped off, with only occasional transactions using Ethereum transaction input data messaging to beg for money; ‘let me hold a dollar big bro.’
Read more: DoJ claims Tornado Cash indictment is not about ‘free speech’
The BUIDL fund was also ‘tainted’ after it was sent 1 ETH from the sanctioned crypto mixing service Tornado Cash. When the protocol was sanctioned in August of 2022, this rather more malicious form of trolling was used as a protest to highlight the arbitrary nature of the sanctions and their uncontrollable knock-on effects.
At the time, a number of high-profile Ethereum addresses were ‘dusted’ with Tornado Cash-derived ETH, causing problems with address screening and flagging accounts on exchanges.
