Scan reveals 96,000 fake-address outputs clogging Bitcoin’s unspent database

Blockchain data company Bitquery published a census on Sept. 2 of four ways text appears in Bitcoin, scanning 965,135 blocks and revealing that the same words can impose very different costs on nodes.

Its study counted 13,062 OP_RETURN taunt transactions that added no spendable state, against 96,231 fake-address text outputs that remain in the unspent transaction output set.

The March 21-26, 2026, campaign named Bitcoin Core developer Luke Dashjr in the same two-sentence taunt. Bitquery counted 13,062 transactions from 13,062 sending addresses across 579 blocks, with 0.1014 BTC paid in aggregate fees. The chain records the text, timing, inputs, and fees, but it does not identify the payer, author, or motive.

Across the broader scan, Bitquery classified 4,412,782 OP_RETURN outputs as readable text. Their node cost differs from fake-address text because Bitcoin treats the two output types differently after confirmation.

Nodes do not need to retain an OP_RETURN output in the UTXO database used to check whether coins can be spent, although its data remains in Bitcoin’s block history. The Bitcoin developer guide describes this null-data construction as preferable to methods that create outputs which look spendable and burden the UTXO set.