The photo, titled “Earthset,” shows the Earth as seen from the Moon, was taken by NASA’s Artemis II mission during its current lunar orbit, and was permanently and immutably inscribed on the Bitcoin chain through the Ordinals Protocol.
This image was embedded by a user in WEBP format into Bitcoin block 944,102 on April 7th and weighed 371 kilobytes (KB). Registration cost 13,098 satoshis, but Equivalent to approximately 9.43 USD At the current price of Bitcoin (BTC).
Through the Ordinals Bitcoin Registration Explorer on the Ord.io website, you can see the following image, according to the Ord.io team. 20 million pixels:
The engraved photo is not just an image. “Earth Set” was captured by the crew of Artemis II on April 6 during its lunar flight, when four astronauts aboard the Orion capsule surpassed the record for the longest human journey from Earth. Reached 406,777km It surpassed the record set by Apollo 13 in 1970.
From their position, the crew witnessed a phenomenon known as the moment the Earth disappeared behind the lunar horizon. “Earth set”before reappearing as “Earthrise”. The video captured that moment from the far side of the moon. It’s a perspective that no one has ever observed in such a way before.
Meanwhile, the developer known as LeonidasNFT in X added another detail about the inscription: “It was also burned into Satoshi’s wallet.”
By this phrase he means that the smallest portion of BTC will be linked to the registration. Sent to an address associated with Satoshi Nakamotothe anonymous creator of Bitcoin. Sending value to that address is a symbolic gesture. Funds remain permanently inaccessible and permanently contributed to Bitcoin’s immutable archive.
Registration and discussion in the bitcoiner community
Ordinal inscriptions are a mechanism that allows you to: Associate any data, image, text, or file All types of data are sent to individual Bitcoin Satoshis and recorded permanently and immutably on the chain.
Unlike financial transactions, Inscription does not transfer value from one user to another and uses block space to store information.
These types of inscriptions are the driving force behind heated debates in the Bitcoiner community. The question is whether using Bitcoin to store images or other arbitrary data constitutes a legitimate use of the protocol or an abuse of block space, which many consider spam and others have noted could lead to legal problems for node brokers.
As reported by CriptoNoticias, that discussion led to the development of BIP-110. soft fork what We try to prevent this type of content on our network.
The “diabolical” history of the inscriptions
Reported by user CriptoNoticias, July 2025 Spent about $22,000 on embedding On-chain was extensive text of a religious and conspiratorial nature fragmented into approximately 10,000 transactions using OP_RETURN, a protocol feature that allows arbitrary data to be included in transactions without affecting Bitcoin balances.
The text combines Biblical references, conspiracy theories, and accusations against politicians. That passage says, “Before Eden, this was Satan’s domain.” The author declared himself an instrument of God, and the overall tone was apocalyptic and aggressive.
The contents of this inscription, reconstructed by bitcoiner developer mononaut, are now accessible in a GitHub repository.
This incident and the “Earthset” incident demonstrate the same phenomenon. Regardless of the debate over whether such use was legal or constituted spam, both were permanently and irrevocably etched onto the chain.
