BITCOIN ARTIFACT ARCHIVE

01 / THE STORY
A CAT PERMANENTLY
ETCHED INTO BITCOIN
On November 25, 2011, a Bitcoin transaction used specially generated vanity addresses to encode a passage from Alice's Adventures in Wonderland involving the Cheshire Cat.
The artifact is not an image. Its message exists across the transaction outputs: address by address, line by line, permanently preserved in Bitcoin's public ledger.
1But1DontWantToGoAmongMadxxxzDmyW61Peop1eA1iceRemarkedxxxxxxxxxuLyKu12ohYouCantHe1pThatxxxxxxxxxzCjyMs19SaidTheCatWereA11MadHerexxyTvEir191mMadYoureMadxxxxxxxxxxxxxvwA4Up1HowDoYouKnow1mMadSaidA1icexxZA4Nr12YouMustBeSaidTheCatxxxxxxxz2tFa212orYouWou1dntHaveComeHerexxvtHbqqHOW TO DECODE IT YOURSELF
You do not need to convert the addresses into bytes. These are vanity addresses: their creators generated valid addresses whose visible Base58 characters resemble words.
- Open the transaction. In the explorer, find the eight output addresses and keep them in their original top-to-bottom order.
- Remove the network prefix. Each legacy P2PKH address starts with
1. That first character is structural, not part of the sentence. - Read the human-looking prefix. Stop when the address becomes padding—usually repeated
xcharacters—or turns into an apparently random suffix. - Account for Base58's alphabet. Base58 omits
0,O, uppercaseI, and lowercasel. The creator substitutes look-alikes such as1where the intended sentence needs an “I” or “l.” - Join the fragments. Put the readable portions together in output order, then restore spaces, capitalization, apostrophes, and punctuation from context.
EXAMPLE / ADDRESS 01
1ButIDontWantToGoAmongMadPeoplexxxxxxxResult: “But I don't want to go among mad people…”
WHY THIS PROVES IT IS THE CHESHIRE CAT
8 / 8 FRAGMENTS MATCHBut1DontWantToGoAmongMadBut I don’t want to go among mad…
Peop1eA1iceRemarked…people, Alice remarked.
ohYouCantHe1pThatOh, you can’t help that…
SaidTheCatWereA11MadHere…said the Cat. We’re all mad here.
1mMadYoureMadI’m mad. You’re mad.
HowDoYouKnow1mMadSaidA1iceHow do you know I’m mad? said Alice.
YouMustBeSaidTheCatYou must be, said the Cat…
orYouWou1dntHaveComeHere…or you wouldn’t have come here.
LITERARY CROSS-CHECK
“Oh, you can't help that,” said the Cat: “we're all mad here. I'm mad. You're mad.”
The decoded outputs reproduce the exchange in Chapter VI, “Pig and Pepper,” where Alice is speaking directly with the Cheshire Cat. The repeated phrases “said the Cat”, “we're all mad here”, and Alice's replies identify the passage—not merely a generic cat.
Compare Chapter VI at Project Gutenberg02 / PRIMARY SOURCE
VERIFY IT YOURSELF
TRANSACTION ID
28ccf29cfcc9f82d42793db770e7c7894d61ccf3d18299f34bda2e54415da287BITCOIN BLOCK
154,769DATE
November 25, 201103 / CONTEXT
A SHORT
HISTORY
2009
Bitcoin launches.
NOV 25, 2011
The Cheshire Cat dialogue is permanently encoded into Bitcoin using vanity addresses.
TODAY
The transaction remains publicly verifiable on the Bitcoin blockchain.