Thank you to all, especially gmaxwell for the detailled answer and the word "topological".

In fact my question comes from the recent address bc1qhtawge4km6juhlkrnvt7qjahhsc96qdlgf3c8t which got 10,000 btc on  july 4th, 2025 at block 903978 and in the same block received some dust with an OP_RETURN mentionning 342038203135203136203233203432, which was discussed a long time ago on this forum in spanish https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=1575193.0

Out of curiosity I looked at the private key made in hex format of the first 64 decimals of Pi
1415926535 8979323846 2643383279 5028841971 6939937510 5820974944 5923
This gives in P2PKH the address 1CBDsCzfGBNXvTqpiRZQ6EZi2DYF5VQmGU

To my surprise it had some transactions in march 2025, so a just few months ago. The related transactions are strange, for example it got its balance from bc1q5a3ak3vlmsawfptv99pvmxzv4qxvg7aj7re48g and this one has most of its transactions as payment+change to itself, which I thought is a very old way of doing transactions

Is that correct? Do you notice other curious things about these addresses?

Thanks.

Thank you to all. Same block is what is needed, and indeed a larger fee seems to have worked in some cases I have seen.

Newbie question about the speed of the network in 2025.

Suppose I want to monitor with a bot a given long dormant address A, so that if it sends a transactions to some other address B, say tomorrow at 10:09:26,  then my bot will also send a transaction to B at the same exact time,so that in the blockchain it is impossible to say which one is earliest.

Is it possible? Can you expnain the mechanism, including the time it takes for a tx to be accepeted. Thank you.

Recently a lot of old large wallets, possibly withblost keys, have been tagged with OP_RETURNs by a claim of ownership pointing to the Bank Salomon Brothers, which is still a subsidiary of City Group apparently (to be confirmed).

The initial notice served is this https://salomonbros.com/owner-notice
In particular it says:
"Our client seeks ownership right to the digital wallet for which no valid owner responds prior to October 5, 2025. Hence forth, no person shall trespass upon, infringe the rights of, nor attempt to extract any digital asset, from this digital wallet without prior written authorization of our client, except for an individual or entity which can show valid proof of ownership."

So this is a client of the Bank, not the Bank itself.

But it also links to another notice  https://salomonbros.com/about-notices which adds context:
"There are bad actors who seek to take advantage of these keyless wallets. They could include rogue states and criminal organizations that have far more resources than individual wallet holders. Our client believes this issue must be resolved to eliminate this risk."

The wording is rather strange "Less than 1/3th of 1% of all crypto digital wallets have been or will be notified."

It also appears to react to the 80 000 BTC that moved on 4th july and had been among those tagged:
"Are Wallet holders Taking Notices Seriously?
It appears so. Last week, after receiving the Notice, some wallet owners signaled their wallets are not abandoned by using their private key in a transaction. In this case by moving the contents of their wallet to a new wallet."

It adds a bait of gains for those who think they can claim ownership without a privkey "Our client is establishing a keyless wallet recovery fund arrangement for those who lost access to their wallets but can support a valid claim to ownership. Owners who have lost access to their wallets and would otherwise suffer a total loss - can now gain value through the Client's efforts. This arrangement will be administered by Salomon Brothers. Details will be announced in the coming months. "

This looks like phishing. And then the text actually reacts to that, in an english with spelling errors:
"Media Reports: Most Reporting To-Date Is Misleading & Speculative

Many coin media reports to this date, July 9, have been based on speculation rather than actual facts. We are dismayed that the reporting thus far is based on zero information from Salomon Brothers. Some have reported, with no evidence, that the client is a "hacker" (implying nefarious intent) or is phishing and has targeted certain wallets. All of that is false.


The client is not a hacker and is not physhing and no specific wallet is targeted. Applying a little common sense and logic can usually reveal the inaccurate reports. Ask yourself, (1) would a hacker engage a financial institution like Salomon Brothers if they meant to do something nefarious? Of course not. And, (2)  would any financial institution allow a client to phish for data? Of course not. Further, and logically, if a party wanted to phish for data - they would not be going to abandoned wallets (that they cannot access) they would direct efforts to wallets that are not abandoned so that they can try to get the key. Lastly, (4) the Notice is to a multiple wallets, all of which fit certain objective criteria. No specific wallet or wallets are targeted. How could anything be achieved by targeting one abandoned wallet or a few abandoned wallets? "

My only question is: what is the status of Salomon Brothers Inc and that website? Is it really still inside City Group?

The scammy OP_RETURNs have nothing to do with the 80k move, one was even served to 1CounterpartyXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXUWLpVr which is an address well known for being impossible compitationally for anybody to have its private key.

As for the link to $GIGANT, this I don't know bit seems unlikely.

The only one solid information on the 80k move is its timing on 4th july. Could indicate a patriotic US owner, perhaps someone supportive of the BTC reserve.

Hello,

What is the public key you are refering to?  Am I right that bloc 218 only has one mining transaction?

And can you give an example of XOR decoding ?

Thank you very much.

The private keys you mention are in WIF(u) format. In HEX format 64bits they are in fact the very first few addresses like 000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000001a

It is known that these adresses had been used early on in bitcoin history, some even date from 2017.

Now, you also say that you found other private keys corresponding to addresses used this year. This part is interesting: could you olease post a few examples? It could be possible that some early users haven't updated their software and still ise a faulty one.

Thank you nc50lc, we're close now: indeed on sourceforge the v0.2 has it (dated 2009-12-14) and the v0.1.5 hasn't (dated 2009-08-30), so of those dates are correct then it must have been implemented around september or october 2009.

Thank ypu very much Dave, it lead me to 0.3 on sourceforge which already had the new key thing https://sourceforge.net/p/bitcoin/code/HEAD/tree/tags/0.3.0/main.cpp

Thank you Dave.

Does anybody know in which release it changed and where is the corresponding source code?

Thank you. I saw that also but I was puzzled since I thought the change was sent to a new adress, not an existing one.

Hello,

In bitcoin core v0.1 in the file main.cpp starting at line 2514 there is a function CreatTransaction there is a part as follows

// Fill vin
                foreach(CWalletTx* pcoin, setCoins)
                    for (int nOut = 0; nOut < pcoin->vout.size(); nOut++)
                        if (pcoin->vout[nOut].IsMine())
                            wtxNew.vin.push_back(CTxIn(pcoin->GetHash(), nOut));

I believe this is where a new adress is created for the change, is that correct? If so, how is it created exactly? I mean I am scanning the code to find where exactly is computed the private key of the change adress.

I see, thank you very much.

Thanks. But let's focuss on just the first 10 blocks produces by Satoshi. So there's no issue of difficulty retarget. And if I were to use the exact same nonce that Satoshi tried at the time, would it now generate the same data?

Cheers.

Hello, a newbie question : is block generation deterministic?

What I mean is if I were to install the original bitcoin program from january 2009 on a Windows PC unconnected to the internet (or maybe connected to another PC in a local network for validation if needed, without any connection to today's true blockchain), and use as a seed the same data as described here https://en.bitcoin.it/wiki/Genesis_block and start mining, would it generate the next few blocks with the exact same characteristics as in the true blockchain? 

Thanks.

Okay, thanks. So it is really improbable. I'm still a bit unseasy to have no edge against the "three times quickly" scenario, but I guess nothing is truly certain.

This is a newbie question.

Let's make the following scenario: some hacker, with sheer luck (since finding a private key is so very improbable), manages to steal some bitcoins from one of the very early blocks (the first 5 were arguably mined by Satoshi). And then the hacker, being an anarchist, signs something like "i found a backdoor in secp256k1 lol".

What would be the most probable reaction from the crowds? How could I edge aginst this? I am looking for answers based on previous analogous situations in economics or finance (big surprise in something thought robust).

Thank you.