Today an excited user on Reddit rushed to talk about a series of five transactions totaling around 250 BTC (approx. $71 thousand) moving from extremely early Bitcoin blocks thought to belong to Satoshi Nakamoto, the enigmatic inventor (or inventors) of Bitcoin.

The transactions have quickly been revealed to be spoofed, affecting only Bitcoin wallet and block explorer Blockchain.info (Blockchain Ltd.).

Shortly after the initial Reddit post, users went to work attempting to determine where they went and who moved them. After all, Satoshi has not been seen or heard from since mysteriously exiting the Bitcoin scene in 2011. This is also of interest because Satoshi is thought to potentially be sitting on the equivalent of $250 million in bitcoins.

The post on Reddit listed five transactions, all linked through Blockchain.info:

Im sure he has all the Private Keys from all his Bitcoin Adresses! So there are around 1m BTC he owns and maybe is going to spend them now !!!

Block 1: https://blockchain.info/en/address/12c6DSiU4Rq3P4ZxziKxzrL5LmMBrzjrJX

Block 2: https://blockchain.info/en/address/1HLoD9E4SDFFPDiYfNYnkBLQ85Y51J3Zb1

Block 3: https://blockchain.info/en/address/1FvzCLoTPGANNjWoUo6jUGuAG3wg1w4YjR

Block 4: https://blockchain.info/en/address/15ubicBBWFnvoZLT7GiU2qxjRaKJPdkDMG

Block 5: https://blockchain.info/en/address/1JfbZRwdDHKZmuiZgYArJZhcuuzuw2HuMu

(Transaction links have been changed to English for SiliconANGLE readers.)

However, after examining the transactions strange inconsistencies began to emerge. First, none of these transactions appeared on other Bitcoin block explorers, only Blockchain.info seems to display this info. Next, the transactions themselves seemed to be part of orphaned blocks attached to very old blocks.

Even on Blockchain.info these odd transactions were not confirmed.

The engineers at Blockchain.info themselves quickly tweeted that this revelation about Satoshi was not true.

Funds attributed to Satoshi Nakamoto have not moved. They are unconfirmed by the Bitcoin network and likely spoofed. More details to follow.

— Blockchain (@blockchain) August 4, 2015

Judging from the fact the transaction only appears on Blockchain.info and nowhere else–even Bitcoiners who run full nodes checked their transactions and saw nothing–it’s possible to conclude that this spoof only affected its service. The transactions were also never confirmed, so even if a malicious attacker had desired to convince people of their validity it would be difficult.

Shortly thereafter the post on Reddit, by a /u/SatoshiBit, was deleted. The SatoshiBit account itself was a new account made explicitly to post this information as well.

Everyone: put your hats back on. Satoshi Nakamoto has not revealed herself (or himself, or themselves). Nobody has hacked her keys and is now moving ancient and buried bitcoins. It’s a moment of excitement in an otherwise quiet afternoon, but it’s not what it at first seemed to be.

SiliconANGLE will update as Blockchain.info explains how this happened.

Update: A security researcher has come forward to explain how the spoof happened and deliver the technical details.

photo credit: Bitcoin IMG_1924 via photopin (license)