You Can Now Read the US Constitution via the Bitcoin Blockchain

We, the people of the cryptocurrency ecosystem… can now read the entire US Constitution directly from the Bitcoin blockchain.

This feat was made possible late Thursday when an anonymous Bitcoin user wrote the text of the document directly onto the immutable blockchain, making it accessible on-chain for the duration of the network’s existence.

The 44.4 kilobyte transaction — significant in size for Bitcoin — cost the user about $83.41 in transaction fees, according to a blockchain explorer.

For comparison, other simpler Bitcoin transactions around the same time:such as a transfer of approximately 0.01 BTC—recorded at only 227 bytes, or about 0.5% of the size as the inscription. Even if the overpayment was more than 105 times, that transaction only cost $17, or about 20% of the value of the Constitution.

The inscription was created using Bitcoin’s “OP_RETURN” output field, which allows users to associate information with transactions. Previously that field had a byte limit, but a change last year removed the capallowing the large inscription.

The change, one hotly contested topic among Bitcoin developerswas discussed for months by those close to the network. Proponents saw it as an improvement, allowing the Bitcoin network to support more use cases. Meanwhile, opponents called it a shift in the network’s original ethos, from financial transactions to data storage.

Since removing the byte limit, a proposal was created to deal with arbitrary data.

Inscriptions are not new to Bitcoin, which entered a major craze in 2023 when the trend became so strong that the mempool reached its highest point since data were collected.

Before that craze, there was significant interest in it Bitcoin ordinal numbers– or the equivalent of NFTs on Bitcoin – sparked major debates about the blockspace axis Bitcoin transaction fees rose and congestion led to huge numbers of unconfirmed transactions.

Similar to the inscription in the Constitution, Bitcoin’s Ordinals standard led to the inscription of images, text, gamesand audio on the Bitcoin blockchain. For example, a social media post from former SEC commissioner Gary Gensler’s compromised account approval of Bitcoin ETFs in 2024 it will be registered on the network for eternity.

It’s not immediately clear why someone decided to spend $83 to write the US Constitution on the Bitcoin blockchain; so far no one has publicly claimed responsibility for the act.

One of America’s most famous documents, the crypto world already has a history with the US Constitution, which was signed just over a year after America declared its independence in 1776.

In 2021, ConstitutionDAO, a decentralized autonomous organization (DAO) or collective of users with a shared purpose, will raised more than $45 million hoping to win a rare copy of the document through an auction. The now defunct organization lost to billionaire Ken Griffin.