FIG. 01 — CHESHIRE CAT ASCII ARTWORK
ASCII artwork of the grinning Cheshire Cat with its blockchain date, block number, and Alice in Wonderland quotation

THE FIRST CAT ON THE BLOCKCHAIN

CHESHIRE
CAT

NOVEMBER 25, 2011

BITCOIN BLOCK 154,769

VIEW ON-CHAIN PROOF

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.

TX OUTPUTS / BASE58

8 ADDRESSES

011But1DontWantToGoAmongMadxxxzDmyW6
021Peop1eA1iceRemarkedxxxxxxxxxuLyKu
0312ohYouCantHe1pThatxxxxxxxxxzCjyMs
0419SaidTheCatWereA11MadHerexxyTvEir
05191mMadYoureMadxxxxxxxxxxxxxvwA4Up
061HowDoYouKnow1mMadSaidA1icexxZA4Nr
0712YouMustBeSaidTheCatxxxxxxxz2tFa2
0812orYouWou1dntHaveComeHerexxvtHbqq

HOW 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.

  1. Open the transaction. In the explorer, find the eight output addresses and keep them in their original top-to-bottom order.
  2. Remove the network prefix. Each legacy P2PKH address starts with 1. That first character is structural, not part of the sentence.
  3. Read the human-looking prefix. Stop when the address becomes padding—usually repeated x characters—or turns into an apparently random suffix.
  4. Account for Base58's alphabet. Base58 omits 0, O, uppercase I, and lowercase l. The creator substitutes look-alikes such as 1 where the intended sentence needs an “I” or “l.”
  5. Join the fragments. Put the readable portions together in output order, then restore spaces, capitalization, apostrophes, and punctuation from context.

EXAMPLE / ADDRESS 01

1ButIDontWantToGoAmongMadPeoplexxxxxxx
Readable messageVanity padding

Result: “But I don't want to go among mad people…”

WHY THIS PROVES IT IS THE CHESHIRE CAT

8 / 8 FRAGMENTS MATCH
01But1DontWantToGoAmongMad

But I don’t want to go among mad…

02Peop1eA1iceRemarked

…people, Alice remarked.

03ohYouCantHe1pThat

Oh, you can’t help that…

04SaidTheCatWereA11MadHere

…said the Cat. We’re all mad here.

051mMadYoureMad

I’m mad. You’re mad.

06HowDoYouKnow1mMadSaidA1ice

How do you know I’m mad? said Alice.

07YouMustBeSaidTheCat

You must be, said the Cat…

08orYouWou1dntHaveComeHere

…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 Gutenberg

02 / PRIMARY SOURCE

VERIFY IT YOURSELF

TRANSACTION ID

28ccf29cfcc9f82d42793db770e7c7894d61ccf3d18299f34bda2e54415da287

BITCOIN BLOCK

154,769

DATE

November 25, 2011

03 / CONTEXT

A SHORT
HISTORY

  1. 2009

    Bitcoin launches.

  2. NOV 25, 2011

    The Cheshire Cat dialogue is permanently encoded into Bitcoin using vanity addresses.

  3. TODAY

    The transaction remains publicly verifiable on the Bitcoin blockchain.