I wonder what was the oldest brainwallet ever found. Vasek reported this one in her paper: "This string contains 0.25 BTC hiding in plain sight." -> 1AJ3vE2NNYW2Jzv3fLwyjKF1LYbZ65Ez64
It has been used for the first time on 2011-07-14.
The story behind it here:
https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=28877.01. Was there anything older found by anyone?
2. What has been used before? Purely random generated numbers?
Interesting question, I was curious myself so did some analysis into this. This is the top-5 of known brainwallets and when they first were used on the bitcoin blockchain:
Date first used Address Passphrase used
2011-07-14 1AJ3vE2NNYW2Jzv3fLwyjKF1LYbZ65Ez64 This string contains 0.25 BTC hiding in plain sight.
2011-09-05 1EHNa6Q4Jz2uvNExL497mE43ikXhwF6kZm 00000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000012011-09-14 1ERczz9PRkdcbLmFRgGKKTU5BADthAcHdi one two three four five six seven
2011-10-14 1Km3PemDrwiwA1gEEgKLgizLgdsqwp4XZz testing 123
2011-12-03 1JryTePceSiWVpoNBU8SbwiT7J4ghzijzW Satoshi Nakamoto
So it does seem the "This string contains 0.25 BTC hiding in plain sight." was indeed the very first one.
Disclaimer: based on the brainwallets I have available. Could be older ones I simply am not aware of. If that's the case please let me know!