SummaryMiners have been writing short messages into Bitcoin blocks since block 0, using the coinbase transaction's scriptSig, a field of up to 100 bytes that the miner fills freely. This is a short list of well-documented examples with block heights and the exact text, each read from the block's raw coinbase bytes: the genesis headline, Latin prayers from 2011, pool tags and votes, a love note in a halving block, and the New York Times headline in block 629,999.
One distinction first, because this site sells something that sounds similar. Every message below is in a block on Bitcoin's actual chain, stored by every full node. The blocks Strike a Block mines are standalone blocks in the same format. They are not on Bitcoin's blockchain, and nothing here should be read as saying they are.
Where the messages go
The first transaction in every block is the coinbase, which pays the miner. Its one input spends nothing, so the script on that input has no job to do, and the miner may fill it with between 2 and 100 bytes. Since 2013 the first few of those bytes must encode the block height (BIP 34). The rest is free.
Most of the time the space holds a pool's name and some counter bytes that the pool varies to get fresh hashes. Sometimes it holds a sentence. I covered the exact byte layout for block 0 in a separate post.
For each entry I fetched the block's coinbase from mempool.space on 10 November 2026 and decoded the bytes as UTF-8. Text is quoted as it decodes. Dates are the block's own timestamp in UTC.
Block 0: the headline
The Times 03/Jan/2009 Chancellor on brink of second bailout for banks3 January 2009. The original, from Satoshi Nakamoto: a front-page headline from The Times of London. It set the pattern that later messages copy, a newspaper, a date in DD/Mon/YYYY form, a headline. Block 0 on mempool.space.
Blocks 139,690 and after: Latin prayers
Eligius/Benedictus Deus. Benedictum Nomen Sanctum eius.5 August 2011. In August 2011, blocks from the Eligius mining pool carried lines of Catholic prayer. This one is the opening of the Divine Praises: "Blessed be God. Blessed be His Holy Name." Block 139,792 the next day reads Benedictus Iesus Christus, verus Deus et verus homo. and block 141,460 on 18 August reads ... O dulcis Virgo Maria. Ora pro nobis, sancta Dei Genetrix. Block 139,690.
Block 210,000: tags in the first halving block
/P2SH/ ... /slush/28 November 2012. The block where the reward first halved, from 50 to 25 BTC, carries two short tags among its counter bytes. /slush/ names the pool that mined it. /P2SH/ is a leftover vote: in early 2012 miners signalled support for pay-to-script-hash (BIP 16) by putting that string in their coinbases. Block 210,000.
Tags like these are the most common coinbase messages by far. They are closer to a signature than to a sentence.
Block 420,000: a love note in the second halving block
七彩神仙鱼 Chandler Guo loves YangYang Jin.🐟Mined by zzhhzz9 July 2016. The block that cut the reward from 25 to 12.5 BTC. The Chinese characters are "discus fish", the name F2Pool was known by, and the fish emoji was the pool's mark. Between them is a personal dedication. Block 420,000.
Block 481,824: a political position
/BTCC/ Support /NYA/24 August 2017. The first block under the SegWit rules. The pool BTCC used it to restate support for the New York Agreement, a 2017 proposal that paired SegWit with a later block size increase. During that dispute, coinbase tags such as /NYA/ were how pools declared a side in public. Block 481,824.
Block 629,999: the echo
🐟NYTimes 09/Apr/2020 With $2.3T Injection, Fed's Plan Far Exceeds 2008 Rescue11 May 2020, 19:23:23 UTC. This is the last block before the third halving, mined by F2Pool. It follows the genesis format exactly, with a New York Times headline about the Federal Reserve's response to the pandemic in place of the Times of London one about bank bailouts. Block 629,999.
The halving block itself came 20 seconds later by timestamp and says only Mined by AntPool119, followed by binary data. Block 630,000.
Block 840,000: the fourth halving
/ViaBTC/Mined by buzz120/20 April 2024. The block that took the reward to 3.125 BTC carries a pool tag and a miner's handle. Block 840,000.
What these have in common
Each of these was written by whoever won that block. To put a sentence into Bitcoin's chain this way you have to mine a Bitcoin block, and a recent block hash has 19 or more leading hex zeros. That takes a large pool, not a person with a USB stick. (I worked through how long each extra zero takes elsewhere.)
Each is also short. A hundred bytes minus the height and the pool's own data leaves room for a headline and not much more.
And each stays exactly as written for as long as the chain is kept, because the coinbase is hashed into the block's merkle root and the root is hashed into the header. That is the property people respond to: a line of text with real proof of work stacked on top of it.
What a struck block is, by comparison
Strike a Block borrows the format and not the chain. A struck block has the same 80-byte header, the same coinbase layout as block 0, and your line where the headline was. A real Bitcoin ASIC mines it until the hash has 8, 10, 11 or 12 leading zeros. Anyone can re-hash it and check.
What it does not have is a network. It is one block with nothing built on it, kept on this site and in the JSON you are emailed. It is a keepsake made with the same tools, not an entry in Bitcoin's ledger, and it is not a coin or a token.
To decode block 0's coinbase yourself, use the genesis block decoder.
Sources
- Raw coinbase data for every block above: mempool.space REST API, fetched 10 November 2026. Each entry links its block page.
- Coinbase size limits and the height rule: BIP 34.
- The
/P2SH/vote: BIP 16.
If you want a line of your own mined into a standalone block, the tiers are on the home page, and there is a gift page if it is for someone else.