Binance hacker’s frozen-in-place Bitcoin stash is drawing begging notes and token shills

Strangers are sending sub-dollar payments with OP_RETURN messages to the 19 wallets holding 18,270 stolen BTC The 18,270 BTC stolen from Binance has not budged since Thursday. The wallets holding it, however, have developed an active social life. Strangers keep sending the hacker tiny Bitcoin payments, each worth less than a dollar and each carrying a short note. Some plead for a cut of the loot. Others promote tokens. It is the blockchain version of a celebrity’s comment section, except the celebrity is an alleged state-backed thief. A ransom note in reverse The mechanism is a Bitcoin feature called OP_RETURN. Think of it as the memo line on a check, except the memo gets carved into a public ledger that nobody can erase. On the technical side, OP_RETURN is an output type that lets a sender attach up to 80 bytes of data to a transaction. That leaves room for a sentence or two. Once a block confirms it, the note stays on the blockchain permanently. There is an irony baked into the whole exercise. To leave a note, each sender has to make a payment. The people asking the hacker for Bitcoin are, technically, handing the hacker Bitcoin first. How the coins got there On October 29, 2026,...