Over $590 Million Has Been Mistakenly Sent to Ethereum’s Genesis Address
Genesis blocks represent the birth of a new cryptocurrency, it’s the first block that is mined on a new blockchain. Ethereum’s first address is worth over $590 Million in Ethereum and ERC20 tokens at the moment and still counting, that has been sent by mistake or airdropped to the address.
As people have been sending BTC to bitcoin’s genesis address for years as a way of acknowledging Satoshi. They’ve also been doing the same with Ethereum’s genesis address, not to acknowledge the genius of Vitalik Buterin and co, but simply due to user error.
0x0000000000000000000000000000000000000000 is an easy address to remember. It’s also an easy one to enter by mistake and doom your tokens for all eternity. It doesn’t help that some wallets used to default to this address until they’d been configured.
Ethereum Wallet Sends To 0x0000000000000000000000000000000000000000 from ethereum
Please help me – I’ve just lost my entire balance to 0x0000000000000000000000000000000000000000
Is there any guidance for me – I was doing the contract to safely split my ETC from my ETH balance and i didn’t get the result I anticipated so I ran it all through again. My ether balance went away. It looks like it went to the address 0x0000000000000000000000000000000000000000. Its my entire savings 1493 ether. Is there anybody who can get this back to me? Can I hire someone to help. I am devastated. I followed the directions in the post on the safe split. There was no problem until I tried to run it through again. Help me please!
In total, the genesis address has received over 750 transactions in three years, and today holds over 7,000 ETH, worth over $6 Million, and more than 200 ERC20 tokens worth over $580 Million. While some of these tokens were airdrops deliberately sent to public ETH addresses, many more were transferred there by mistake.
While the BTC sent to bitcoin’s genesis block are believed to be irretrievable due to a combination of its architecture and Satoshi’s disappearance, that’s not the case with Ethereum. Provided the project’s founders still have access to the private key for this address, it should be possible to set up a smart contract that automatically returns anything sent to it. Until such a time, the genesis address will continue to absorb tokens on a regular basis.