Why does the Genesis block coinbase input script push bits and the value 0x04 before the famous "Chancellor" message?
Why does the Genesis block coinbase input script push bits and the value 0x04 before the famous "Chancellor" message? According to the Wiki , the input script of the Genesis block consists of these bytes: 04FFFF001D0104455468652054696D65732030332F4A616E2F32303039204368616E63656C6C6F72206F6E206272696E6B206F66207365636F6E64206261696C6F757420666F722062616E6B73 We can break this down as follows: 0x04: push 4 bytes 0xffff001d: the same value as the "bits" field of the Genesis block header 0x01: push 1 byte 0x04: push the value 4 remainder: ASCII encoding of the famous message "The Times 03/Jan/2009 Chancellor on brink of second bailout for banks" AFAIK, the first two values pushed to the stack (0xffff001d and 0x04) are unnecessary. Of course, so is the chancellor message, but at least its meaning is a bit more clear. However, the push bits/0x04 pattern also appears in other blocks. For example, the same pattern shows up in the next block (0...