A lot of BTC just destroyed: Block 150951

[etotheipi]

I was just running some of my blockchain utils unit-tests, and it started crashing where it never has before.  Debugging led me to block 150951 which was created a few hours ago.

http://blockexplorer.com/block/0000000000000449ee5b94ba7a051caffff5c23d6a03335f6e20e3985b5ffa61

It appears that the scripts have a one-byte receipient of "0" for the publicKeyHash field (between the OP_HASH160 and OP_EQUALVERIFY).  As far as I can tell, those coins have been effectively destroyed -- Approximately 2500 BTC.  I don't see how they can be recovered, because there would be nothing you could put on top of the stack that would hash160 to a 1-byte output.  (Blockexplorer shows the address as "Unknown").

My guess is that someone was using a home-made client to sign those transactions, and it choked on some bug when they tried to create the TxOuts.  It appears that the change outputs were constructed correctly, but the target output was not... perhaps is one of those "If problem: return 0" conditions gone wrong.

Either that, or a really nasty BTC virus that:  rather than stealing your money, just destroys it...

So who's the lucky person that just lost 2500 BTC?

[mizerydearia]

MagicalTux

[Maged]

More information about this incident can be found here:
https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=50206.0

[DeathAndTaxes]

Either that, or a really nasty BTC virus that:  rather than stealing your money, just destroys it...

No reason for that.  If the attacker can send someone's coins to nowhere then the attacker can also send it to their account.  It is no harder to destroy than steal.

[FreeMoney]

Either that, or a really nasty BTC virus that:  rather than stealing your money, just destroys it...

No reason for that.  If the attacker can send someone's coins to nowhere then the attacker can also send it to their account.  It is no harder to destroy than steal.

I agree.

But maybe...

Make levered bets on the price going up. Credibly destroy tons of coins with viral malware. Your coins and bets profit you greatly and you never have to touch coins with a tainted history.

[etotheipi]

Either that, or a really nasty BTC virus that:  rather than stealing your money, just destroys it...

No reason for that.  If the attacker can send someone's coins to nowhere then the attacker can also send it to their account.  It is no harder to destroy than steal.

I agree.

But maybe...

Make levered bets on the price going up. Credibly destroy tons of coins with viral malware. Your coins and bets profit you greatly and you never have to touch coins with a tainted history.

Well of course: if I was the attacker I would be taking the coins instead of destroying them.  But, given that the coins were destroyed what is a reasonable explanation for it?  The fact is, some people do weird things.  If there's one thing I learned from my years of poker:  always assuming your opponent is a reasonable, rational-thinking person, will lead you to losing a lot of money.

[DeathAndTaxes]

There is a rational mistake for it.  Mt.Gox made a huge mistake.  One they likely aren't going to make again and good example of why new code should be tested on test net.

No conspiracy theories needed.

[mizerydearia]

One they likely aren't going to make again

O RLY? O_x