Bitcoin Forum

I received a payment in my online wallet for 1 satoshi. It has been confirming for days. It has 70 outputs listed each for 1 satoshi. I asked tech support what this was about and they said it was a spam payment, my security wasn't compromised and I should just ignore it. This is the second one of these I've received.
Why would anybody send these? Whats the point. Anybody know anything about spam payments?

What online wallet are you using? If the transaction really is a spam transaction then that online wallet should probably not even show it rather than cluttering up your transaction history with it.

Who knows why people decide to spam the network, I don't think it makes sense to most people, but it's pretty much just a fact that some people are going to try to spam any service that someone makes. Maybe the spammer just doesn't like bitcoin. Spamming isn't entirely bad, it provides some stress testing for when we actually will have that many legitimate transactions.

If you're interested, spamming is basically the reason bitcoin has fees at all. The thought is that if every transaction costs the sender something then there won't be any senders who can afford to send out thousands of transactions. See this page for more info on the fees: https://en.bitcoin.it/wiki/Transaction_fees. A quote from that page: "To prevent "penny-flooding" denial-of-service attacks on the network, the reference implementation caps the number of free transactions it will relay to other nodes to (by default) 15 thousand bytes per minute."

The online wallet service is coinbase. The first one sent had a 0.0003 fee. The second one that is still confirming has a .0004 fee. I dont get why anyone would do this and incur the fees. They also suggested that I change the address regularly but if I use it it's out there anyway. If it continues I'll change it.

I just recived myself 1 satoshi a few days ago !!!
I felt like the luckiest man on hear, free satoshi !!!

Haha, good for you. That's strange, I've never seen spam with such a high fee. Maybe someone is testing which miners have custom software as to when to include transactions. Since they have such a large fee miners would want them, but since the outputs are small the reference implementation (I think) would likely not forward the transactions. You're sure there's no reason that someone would send you that? I was thinking maybe it could be mining dividends, with very low pay-off, but that doesn't make sense because the fee is so high. Although, if it were the miner distributing the rewards in a block that it solved, then it would get the rewards anyway, so the fee really wouldn't matter...

Out of curiousity, could you post a link to see it in a block explorer, such as blockchain.info?

I used it for mining proceeds. Let me know if you learn anything. It has been confirming for days. That's the part I really dont understand.

1GuCbnJikwvSgQbrdfGinsLQsmUFASh2Ug

It appears to be some sort of a mass spamming attempt from these addresses:
https://blockchain.info/address/1BSmartoUnHz32AAdPKcc7cGGC3DiA4RSh
https://blockchain.info/address/1BtcGirgZqyT2z69DLn4y9MErN182mw8Tk

Someone else noticed it and pointed it out in the comments here:
http://www.reddit.com/r/Bitcoin/comments/2hnu8c/college_student_receives_038_bitcoin_by_holding/

Oh well. Coinbase is right. Not hurting anything.

If you feel bad for me, send me 1 satoshi :-P

Got the same one, but it actually confirmed. I think it will eventually confirm, itll just take a few days...

Could we theoretically avoid spam payments by not using bitcoin addresses?

Like, OP_SHA256 or something instead?

I received 2 at about the same time. both sat there confirming for days. The first 1 finally finished. The 2nd 1 is still going and going and going...

Its raining Satoshi!  ;D

It's a form of advertising. People don't click ads right, why not get their attention with free money?

I thought it should not confirm though?  I am used to seeing these appear and not confirm but these are confirming.

From here: https://bitcoin.org/en/developer-guide#non-standard-transactions


Some miner is mining these spam transactions which are non-standard.

I'm glad this is being talked about.  I have been receiving a Satoshi here, a Satoshi there, for the past couple of weeks. 

How about a free bitcoin or 2.

First I received 2. They both were confirming for days. Then 1 disappeared from my account and the other finally finished the next day. Yesterday I received 3 more. I thought maybe because of my joke above where I said send me 1 satoshi. 2 confirmed in around an hour. The third one is still going and looks like it is going to be awhile. Strange since there are fees with each one. I don't understand what would motivate sending these but who am I to argue with free satoshi? :-P

What do you mean by "mining these spam transactions"?

I mean they are conforming when the standard client won't even recognise them as standard.

I was under the impression that these transactions cost more to spend the satoshis themselves if you wanted to. 

Also, I get it (sort of)

Rather pay $500USD  in BTC to spam 250,000 BTC addresses with your name so they could spend income (after all the profile of a btc holder is likely someone who happens to have a little money invested into it) so they could perceivably invest in hyip too.

When I first noticed it I saw it was hitting different members of the Bitcoin community like moderators - I believe that person for person, it probably makes more economic sense for an hyip to pay via blockchain spam as opposed to traditional email spam or junk mail that so often gets trashed or overlooked - hence, people spend up satoshis that can never reallybe spent (at the time this was written as current iteration of standard bitcoin software anyway)

hyip, huh? ???

These transactions are confirming and cost little in fees. They are packed together so that they confirm. See for example this one:

https://blockchain.info/tx/bb0e4b14a0ae2e992feb7e7c34842114a09baf59f333a0f67eb0ccc6ec524413

I guess you have to learn to embrace the spam and love the Satoshi

yes they are confirming, most of them have fee included it's more than the total sending sum itself.
and why it's just a cheap way of advertising their hyip or whatever it is.