It's a very well known address,
currently holding more than 13₿, that will never be spent as no one has the private keys to it.
I know it was created before October 2011 as
some people stumbled upon it at that time. They explain the concept there, but no mention of who created the actual address.
I found a
previous mention of the address in July 2011 where people were basically using it for burning bitcoins, but still, no mention of how or when it was created.
The earliest mention of it that I've found
appeared on 24th of June 2011, but again, no explanation about who created it:
I just saw the address mentioned elsewhere
The
first transaction to that address(for 0.01₿) happened on 21st of June 2011, just 3 days before the previous message.
There was a
thread here asking about it in 2013, but again there's only the explanation of that type of address, and how you can make them, but no original source about who created this particular one.
On the
Bitcoin wiki they simply use it as an example, but again, no source for it:
A common method is to send bitcoin to an address that was constructed and only made to pass validity checks, but for which no private key is actually known. An example of such an address is "1BitcoinEaterAddressDontSendf59kuE"
Even on
research papers it's used without any source:
If there are reservations about collusion with miners or in the case of ”proof of stake” networks, then the funds can also be sent to a verifiable unspendable address such as 1BitcoinEaterAddressDontSendf59kuE.
It's probably related to people designing
proof of burn, maybe an idea from
Iain Stewart? I haven't found anything concrete about that particular address, everyone appears to just simply have seen it from somewhere else. Anyone knows where was this address posted originally?
