Bitquery finds 96000 fake-address outputs in Bitcoin's unspent database

Bitquery's analysis on September 2 revealed 96,231 fake-address text outputs in Bitcoin's unspent transaction output (UTXO) set, identified during a scan of 965,135 blocks. The study also counted 13,062 OP_RETURN taunt transactions that do not add spendable state. The campaign, which occurred from March 21-26, 2026, involved Bitcoin Core developer Luke Dashjr and noted 13,062 transactions from unique addresses, with total fees of 0.1014 BTC. Bitquery classified 4,412,782 OP_RETURN outputs as readable text, highlighting that nodes treat these outputs differently than fake-address text after confirmation. While OP_RETURN outputs do not need to be retained in the UTXO database, fake-address text occupies space where an address hash would typically be, creating an illusion of spendability without a corresponding private key. The analysis estimated that the 96,231 fake-address outputs contain approximately 3.2 BTC that cannot be spent. The release of Bitcoin Core 30.0 in October 2025 facilitated larger OP_RETURN transactions, increasing the default data carrier size to 100,000. This change did not alter consensus rules but allowed for easier propagation of longer messages, which increased significantly after the update. The study focused on the implications of these output types on node state and UTXO set management.