mystery 1 Satoshi deposits to one of my failed Gox withdrawal addresses

[BTCtrader71]

I just received two one-Satoshi deposits into one of the addresses that I used 2 weeks ago during my attempts to withdraw funds from Gox. I have no idea where they came from.

Anyone else get this? Is the Gox team refunding our bitcoins one satoshi at a time? lol

here are the transactions in question:
https://blockchain.info/tx/cee291639f10ddd6518cdb39b7ff1bafdb605344f65087addfb40d82844ac6cf
https://blockchain.info/tx/b0d79de8f9331f8ba538a549d172dfa2d3974bf14d3adde4550bd699f7dc62c6

At the time of this post, the above transactions have not been confirmed.

[1715467374]

1715467374

[1715467374]

1715467374

[1715467374]

1715467374

[1715467374]

1715467374

[1715467374]

1715467374

[1715467374]

1715467374

[BTCtrader71]

A tad bit more investigation into it, and I see that the following address
https://blockchain.info/address/1Enjoy1C4bYBr3tN4sMKxvvJDqG8NkdR4Z
has multiple double spend transactions emanating today from it, each transaction sending a single Satoshi  to each of a huge number of addresses. One of those addresses is one of mine, and the only place I have ever used that address is an attempted withdrawal from Gox (on around 1/26/14) which failed.

So, apparently the Gox tech team is sending test transactions of 1 Satoshi to each of a zillion customer addresses. I'll interpret this as evidence that they are in fact trying to debug something, as they claim. Just weird.

Anybody out there able to decipher what exactly they are doing?

[infoman]

ok, this is weird, I have got the same, two (yet unconfirmed) staoshi transactions going through right now

also, had a bitstamp withdrawal 5 days ago and now I got 2 satoshis added to that one as well, how is it even possible?

[Bitnicity]

guys, this is very unusual and strange, i also received two, but one to one of my Watch Only(public to receive donations) addresses i never used in any platform (including Gox). I used Blockchain online wallet and key all my addressed there, it is some problem for blockchain wallet instead of MT?

[BTCtrader71]

Indeed very strange. If the addresses are not necessarily Gox-specific, then how are they chosen? Just randomly pulled from the blockchain? What would be the purpose of this?

[Bitnicity]

this is 100% not Gox specific, many people received, my address receiving the bit happen to the one that I publicize on the public domain for receiving donations, so it's easy for them to scan those addresses.

[picobit]

If MtGox attempted to make a transfer to the address, but that transfer failed as a double spend because their wallet database is corrupt (and that appears to be the consequence of the bug they are having) then these addresses have been published on the net.  It looks like somebody is occationally sending dust amounts of bitcoin to many addresses, perhaps in the hope that the receivers' wallet will combine many of these micropayments from different addresses into a single payment.  This would help determining which bitcoin addresses belong to the same owner. 

There have been many reports of these strange micropayments, and the only theory I have seen is that it is to try to break some of the anonymity of bitcoin by tricking our wallets into revealing which addresses that belong together.

Spooky, but probably not related to MtGox.

[hilariousandco]

A few people have gotten the two satoshis from the Enjoy Sochi addresses: https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=458934.0

[infoman]

today I got 1 satoshi from "Play and Win BTC"
never played on the site or even visited...

[eldentyrell]

Anyone else get this? Is the Gox team refunding our bitcoins one satoshi at a time? lol

They aren't from gox; they're from some entity (or entities) that are trying to build a blockchain map.

This is one reason why it's such an utter travesty that the devs have dragged their feet on mainlining coin control, a well-tested patch that's been around for at least two years.

I run the coin control client and use its features to safely redirect this dust to the donation addresses for various charities and open source projects.  That's the right way to respond, but people using the vanilla bitcoin-qt client don't have that option.

[Falkvinge]

I just got that to my Android phone, which has never received coins from Gox afaik.

https://i.imgur.com/GrfQIOQ.jpg

Is somebody spamming Bitcoin wallets using vanity addresses? Very creative.