Bitcoin’s very first block, known as its ‘Genesis block’ contained a headline taken from the front page of the UK’s The Times newspaper dated Saturday 3rd January 2009. The purpose of the message in the Genesis block was obvious, FIAT currency and those who control it can not be trusted, Bitcoin fixes this.

For those of you with an interest in finding this reference in the Bitcoin code you first need to view the block. You can do that online here: https://blockchain.info/block-height/0

In the block the famous quote is actually encoded in hexadecimal: 5468652054696d65732030332f4a616e2f32303039204368616e63656c6c6f72206f6e206272696e6b206f66207365636f6e64206261696c6f757420666f722062616e6b73

If you run the above through a hex to ASCII converter you’ll get:
The Times 03/Jan/2009 Chancellor on brink of second bailout for banks

You can find a hex to ASCII converter here: https://www.rapidtables.com/convert/number/hex-to-ascii.html

The Times headline 3.1.09