You Can Now Read the US Constitution via the Bitcoin Blockchain

We the people of the cryptocurrency ecosystem… can now read the entire U.S. Constitution directly from the Bitcoin blockchain. 

The feat was made possible late Thursday when an anonymous Bitcoin user inscribed the document’s text directly onto the immutable blockchain, making it accessible on-chain for the duration of the network’s existence.

The 44.4 kilobyte transaction—significant in size for Bitcoin—cost the user around $83.41 in transaction fees, according to a blockchain explorer.

By comparison, other, simpler Bitcoin transactions around the same time—like a transfer of around 0.01 BTC—registered at just 227 bytes, or around 0.5% of the size as the inscription. Even when overpaying by more than 105x, that transaction cost just $17, or about 20% of the Constitution’s etching. 

The inscription was made using Bitcoin’s “OP_RETURN” output field, which allows users to attach information to transactions. Previously, that field had a byte limit, but a change last year removed the cap, therefore enabling the large inscription.

The change, a hotly contested subject among Bitcoin developers, was debated for months by those close to the network. Supporters viewed it as an enhancement, allowing the Bitcoin network to support more use cases. Meanwhile, detractors called it a shift in the original ethos of the network, from financial transactions to data storage. 

Since the byte limit removal, a proposal has been made to deal with arbitrary data.

Inscriptions are not new to Bitcoin, which was swept up in a major craze in 2023 when the trend had grown so strong that the mempool reached its highest point since data had been collected. 

Prior to that craze, significant interest in Bitcoin Ordinals—or the equivalent of NFTs on Bitcoin—led to major debates about the blockspace as Bitcoin transaction fees rose and congestion led to massive unconfirmed transaction counts. 

Similar to the Constitution inscription, Bitcoin’s Ordinals standard led to the inscription of images, text, games, and audio on the Bitcoin blockchain. For example, a social media post from the compromised account of former SEC Commissioner Gary Gensler approving Bitcoin ETFs in 2024 has been inscribed on the network for eternity.

It is not immediately apparent why someone decided to spend $83 to inscribe the U.S. Constitution on the Bitcoin blockchain; so far, no one has publicly claimed responsibility for the act. 

One of America’s most famous documents, the crypto world already has a history with the U.S. Constitution, which was signed a little more than one year after America declared its independence in 1776.

In 2021, ConstitutionDAO, a decentralized autonomous organization (DAO) or collective of users with a shared goal, raised more than $45 million in the hopes of winning a rare copy of the document via auction. The now-defunct organization lost out to billionaire Ken Griffin.