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From previous questions this bitcoin 1FYMZEHnszCHKTBdFZ2DLrUuk3dGwYKQxh address had an invalid public key of "00" and was unspendable but the coins are now spent?? The invalid key was generated by a bug in the wallet software the owner was using and should have been "locked" due to the invalid key

see link to the owners original query https://www.reddit.com/r/Bitcoin/comments/2t3vn0/i_cant_send_my_btc_a_triangle_apear_i_use_multibit/

also see link to a paper that lists that this is an invalid key https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/research/wp-content/uploads/2013/11/734.pdf?from=http%3A%2F%2Fresearch.microsoft.com%2Fpubs%2F204914%2F734.pdf

see page 11

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  • "00" is not a private key, so it certainly wasn't the key for that address.
    – Pieter Wuille
    Commented Dec 20, 2017 at 23:42
  • @PieterWuille: It looks like the paper of Bos et al uses 00 for the "point at infinity" public key (not private key). So there is a valid and interesting question here - either they were mistaken in their claim that it is unspendable (which might have to do with some interesting mathematical property of ECDSA), or else someone has broken ECDSA and/or RIPEMD-160 (which would be interesting for obvious reasons, though pretty unlikely).
    – Nate Eldredge
    Commented Dec 21, 2017 at 6:40
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    Oh - the spending transaction is unconfirmed. So another possibility is that it actually isn't a valid transaction, but blockchain.info mistakenly thinks that it is (perhaps because they use some homebrew validation code instead of the consensus algorithm)?
    – Nate Eldredge
    Commented Dec 21, 2017 at 7:06
  • The point at infinity is not a valid public key.
    – Pieter Wuille
    Commented Dec 21, 2017 at 7:23
  • @ Nate Eldredge . Oh ok, I see now it says "unconfirmed". How long does it stay in unconfirmed state before being returned or rejected?
    – MShepstone
    Commented Dec 22, 2017 at 7:05

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That address cannot be spent from and any such transaction that spends from it is invalid. However this does not prevent improperly written software from thinking its private key is a valid private and and performing the elliptic curve operations on it. So thus the address was created and a transaction was created that appears valid. But when validating the transaction with proper software, such software rejects it.

This transaction appears on blockchain.info likely because their software is either improperly implemented or simply not validating (or fully validating) transactions. This isn't the first time that's happened though.

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  • That is correct. The address was used as an input in an unconfirmed transaction Received Time 2017-05-24 01:24:03 - it will never confirm: blockchain.info/tx/…
    – Willtech
    Commented Mar 1, 2018 at 8:16

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