
No Sean Spicer Didn’t Tweet a Bitcoin Address
- May 01, 2017
- by
- Christopher Bouzy
Early today Louise Mensch tweeted a blog post written by Laurelai Bailey
EXCLUSIVE: Sean Spicer Tweeted a Bitcoin Address
Her tweet immediately caught my attention because I have been in the Bitcoin/Blockchain space for several years, and Sean Spicer using Bitcoin in any capacity piqued my interest.
Upon reading the blog post, I quickly noticed the title was incorrect. The 8 character string Sean Spicer tweeted “n9y25ah7” was not a Bitcoin address. Bitcoin addresses are 27-34 characters long. When I pointed out that fact to Lousie, her response was:
We know. “Bitcoin verification code” was too long for a headline.
Her response baffled me because Bitcoin doesn’t use “verification codes.” Bitcoin does use transaction IDs, but they are 64 characters long.
I assumed the author of the blog post and Lousie just had their technical jargon confused, Bitcoin and Blockchain technology can be confusing. After quickly looking at the screenshots, I initially assumed someone had created a test transaction because of the low dollar amount. Some people that use Bitcoin send small test transactions before sending a large amount just to confirm the receiver’s address is correct. After further inspection, I realized my initial assumption was incorrect; it wasn’t a test transaction.
Someone used the service Bitsig.io to create a timestamp of the 8 character string Sean Spicer tweeted. This link explains how it works: https://bitsig.io/howitworks
To prove anyone could do it, I created a transaction using the same 8 character string Spicer tweeted. You can view it here: https://bitsig.io/?addr=14JShMWCtweMW6MyzqH1eMzibytHFHpCfW
The transaction Laurelai referenced in her blog post came after Sean Spicer’s tweet; anyone could have created that transaction. There is no way to prove it was Spicer or even someone close to Spicer. Most likely, someone read Spicer’s tweet and decided to timestamp the text to troll or they did it for a laugh.
In closing, I didn’t write this piece to criticize or belittle Laurelai Bailey’s or Louise Mensch’s work. However, there is so much wrong with the blog post the record needed to be corrected. Sean Spicer didn’t tweet a Bitcoin address, and “n9y25ah7” is not a Bitcoin verification code. Furthermore, Sean Spicer almost certainly didn’t timestamp the 8 character string he tweeted. I welcome anyone else to verify or disprove my findings.