Marathon Digital accidentally releases block with extra bitcoin
Marathon Digital reportedly mined an invalid Bitcoin transaction at block height 809478. The publicly traded miner disordered a transaction — spending first, then receiving bitcoin — leading it to lose its 6.25 BTC (~$150,000) Coinbase reward for the erroneous block. Full nodes logged an error message indicating that the block included missing or already-spent bitcoin. In other words, Marathon Digital mined a block of transactions that included a transaction prohibited by Bitcoin’s consensus rules. Specifically, Marathon included this transaction within its block , which spent coins outputting from this transaction which was already mined in the block after the initial transaction. In other words, it was classic, prohibited reordering of coin outputs: spending coins first, then receiving them . Not allowed. Bitcoin doesn’t permit the creation of expenditures ex nihilo, even if they’re accounted for in the very next block. All bitcoin since genesis have bee...