Hidden "Easter Egg" found in Bitcoin code

Let's start with the egg...

Let's start by explaining what an "Easter egg" is in general, especially in the context of the current Easter holiday. Easter eggs are content hidden from the user in games, apps, movies in an obvious incongruous way with the content/feature. They usually have a humorous touch or refer to another well-known game/film/character/book, etc. 

Why are they just called "easter egg"? It's all about the game of finding Easter eggs by children during Easter.

Finding such a reference often requires performing the right actions, pressing a combination of keys, getting into a hard-to-reach nook or cranny, getting all the hidden objects, etc., although more often they require only an association on the part of the user (e.g., dialogue, being a quote from a movie/book, a character's outfit or an advertising poster). Easter egg is a form of play between the creators of a work and its audience.

Definition developed in consultation with Urban Dictionary: easter egg, [accessed 2020-09-06] (English).

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Back to Bitcoin and Satoshi Nakamoto

4 years ago, in 2018, one cryptocurrency enthusiast discovered such an "easter egg" hidden deep in Bitcoin's code. The code in question goes back to the very birth of the blockchain!

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Let's start with a reminder of what was already quite well-known in 2018, namely that Satoshi Nakamoto wrote a famous easter egg into the code:

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However, it seems that in fact, Satoshi has done this at least twice. This easter egg is also hidden in a hexadecimal version nested in some code comments. We didn't find this out until four years ago.

Although the newly discovered message is a variant of an already found easter egg, it is fascinating that people are still finding traces of the mysterious Nakamoto almost 10 years after the first Bitcoin block was mined.

Satoshi's hidden message

Bitcoin's first block is known as the "genesis block." The blue text below is a comment on the code in the "genesis block." Developers add comments to the code to improve its clarity for professionals who will one day look at it. 

Satoshi Nakamoto actually put an "encrypted" version of the legendary quote in a comment in Bitcoin's genesis block. On line 1616 there is a variable containing a hexadecimal string. After converting it to alphanumeric text, the text reads:

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sknab rof tuoliab dnoces fo knirb no rollecnahC 9002/naJ/30 semiT ehT

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Now read it from right to left. But balls...

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