TLDR:
- Galaxy Research studied 562 Bitcoin texts and found random letter patterns instead of any hidden messages
- The bot used 31 transaction chains, with the longest reaching 86 hops through a Bitcoin change addresses.
- The funding trail connects the strange messages to coins that uploaded the US Constitution and documents.
- Mining fees consumed 24% of the wallet’s 3.33 million sats, while 76% still remained in its own addresses
Bitcoin’s strange text messages point to an automated publishing experiment, according to Galaxy Research’s analysis of 562 texts. The activity ran for three weeks and reached roughly 40 transactions daily.
Galaxy traced the funding to coins behind a 44,194-byte US Constitution upload on May 29. Its accounting showed 3.33 million satoshis funded the activity, with 24% spent on mining fees. The researchers dubbed the operator “Babel Scribe,” describing a tool under testing rather than someone sending hidden messages.
Bitcoin OP_RETURN Messages Show Random Patterns
Galaxy Research shared its findings on X after examining messages that resembled encrypted sentences.
Across the sample, each letter appeared between 3.6% and 4.2% of the time. English has a different distribution, ranging from 12.7% for “e” to 0.07% for “z.”
That distinction matters because simple substitution ciphers preserve letter frequency patterns, even when they replace individual letters. Galaxy measured an index of coincidence of 0.0385, consistent with random text.
The researchers also tested for repeating encryption keys across intervals up to 40 letters. The messages lacked the statistical spikes that appeared in their comparison using an encrypted Constitution.
Word lengths provided another clue. Lengths from two through ten letters appeared equally often, while English typically favors three or four letters.
Short messages filled 36 bytes, sometimes adding single-letter padding. Only ten words containing at least four letters repeated across the 562 texts.
Together, those patterns supported Galaxy’s assessment that software generated random letters and arranged them to resemble prose.
Bitcoin OP_RETURN Funding Reveals Automated Testing
The transaction structure reinforced that interpretation. Each transaction contained one input, one fresh change address, and one OP_RETURN output.
OP_RETURN lets a Bitcoin transaction carry data, which explains how these messages appeared on the blockchain. Each subsequent transaction spent change from its predecessor, creating linked sequences the researchers could follow.
Galaxy identified 31 chains, with the longest stretching 86 transactions. Splitter outputs supplied them with either 20,000 or 5,000 satoshis.
Long messages arrived every six hours per chain, while shorter messages followed 90-minute intervals. Daily activity increased from 12 to 24, then roughly 40 transactions.
The funding trail led back to three small exchange withdrawals in May. Related uploads included 99,000 bytes of uppercase gibberish on June 5 and the Declaration of Independence on July 4.
Earlier tests included “Hello, world,” Lorem ipsum, multilingual words, and a JSON file explicitly describing an upload test. Galaxy also identified 34 opaque binary blobs.
For Bitcoin users, the practical issue is transaction activity and fees, rather than an identified payment scheme. The three documents alone cost 512,000 satoshis in mining fees.
Galaxy reported that 76% of the funds remained in the operator’s addresses, with nothing paid to anyone. Its findings point to automated data publishing, without establishing the operator’s identity or a broader purpose.
