The final Bitcoin halving block had a secret message

The third Bitcoin halving occured today at 19:23 UTC, cutting the new supply of Bitcoin in half at block 630,000. But inside the penultimate block, 629,999, was a secret message, an homage to the origin of Bitcoin.

"NYTimes 09/Apr/2020 With $2.3T Injection, Fed's Plan Far Exceeds 2008 Rescue," the block reads. This text was written in the coinbase transaction, where the miner sends themselves the reward.

As Bitcoin diehards know, this isn't the first time that a political statement has been put inside a Bitcoin block. The first ever Bitcoin block, known as the Genesis block, also contained a message.

This was, "The Times 03/Jan/2009 Chancellor on brink of second bailout for banks."

Satoshi Nakamoto, the pseudonymous inventor of Bitcoin, included this message from a Times newspaper article on the day the block was produced. It both timestamped the beginning or Bitcoin and the start of an era.

While the political landscape has changed since then, the defining element of 2020 has been the huge surges in money printing in the US and around the world. Such monetary policy convinced Wall Street legend Paul Tudor Jones to back Bitcoin and put 1-2% of his net worth into it.

F2Pool, which mined the block, included the message to highlight this money printing—and to show that Bitcoin is an alternative. And while the Fed continues to print more dollars, the new supply of Bitcoin has just slowed right down.