15 ms·

Bitcoin puzzle #66 was solved: 6.6 BTC (~$400k) withdrawn

437 points by mrb 2y ago

kurtispatrick9 2y ago
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Marcus_Ford 2y ago
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rue9576 2y ago
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mrb 2y ago
Discussion thread here: https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=1306983.msg64526037#msg64526037 https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=1306983.msg64526037#... Bitcoin puzzles are private keys with just a few unknown bits so that anyone can bruteforce them to collect a reward. Puzzle 66 contained 66 unknown bits and had 6.6 BTC deposited into it by the initial puzzle creator. The private key was 0x000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000002832ed74f2b5e35ee or 256 bits with mostly zeroes but 66 random ones. The next Bitcoin puzzle, #67, has 67 unknown bits, and contains 6.7 BTC up for grabs: https://www.blockchain.com/explorer/addresses/btc/1BY8GQbnueYofwSuFAT3USAhGjPrkxDdW9 https://www.blockchain.com/explorer/addresses/btc/1BY8GQbnue... The previous puzzle by order of difficulty was #64 (not #65, because see below) and was solved on 9/9/2022, so about 2 years ago. In other words, it took about 2 years of compute time to run the 2^66 bruteforcing task. Puzzles that are multiple of 5 (#65 or #70) are special: they have twice more entropy. So that private key #65 doesn't have 65-bit of entropy but 130-bit of entropy. And the creator of the puzzle intentionally published their public key on the blockchain. When you know the public key, brutetforcing the n-bit private key only requires 2^(n/2) work. So puzzle #65 with a 130-bit key actually require bruteforcing up to only 2^65 keys.
- wslh 2y ago
  New to this puzzle! Do you have a more detailed resource to the puzzle? Is it basically brute forcing based on all public keys available on the Bitcoin blockchain? Could this be considered stealing?
  - mrb 2y ago
    Sure, here is a nice little presentation on the puzzle: https://rya.nc/forensic-bitcoin-cracking.html https://rya.nc/forensic-bitcoin-cracking.html The main discussion thread on the bitcoin forum is this but it has a low signal-to-noise ratio: https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=1306983.0 https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=1306983.0 There is a secondary thread here: https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=5218972.0 https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=5218972.0 The point of the puzzle is indeed to brute force some private keys (not public keys), but not all, as 2^256 is computationally impossible. The private keys that have been discovered so far have obviously many zeros in them, so in practice you are never going to accidentally steal from a legitimate address with actually 256 bits of entropy. The creator of the puzzle is anonymous and never came forward (to my knowledge). The point of the puzzle is (1) to be a fun game, and (2) to be a publicly observable way of measuring current brute forcing capabilities.
    - wslh 2y ago
      First, a question: is there something similar for other blockchains? And, a clarification, when I said public keys I referred to public keys that match an unknown private key but I understand now (am I correct?) that this puzzle is purely brute forcing private keys with a lot of zeroes and then matching with the addresses in the blockchain (which would be a function from the public key).
      - mrb 2y ago
        I don't know if other blockchains have these puzzles. You are correct thas this puzzle is brute forcing private keys with a bunch of zeroes, from which a public key can be calculated.
      - thisconnect 2y ago
- ForHackernews 2y ago
  Is this a "puzzle"? Throwing compute at brute-forcing a random number doesn't seem like solving a puzzle to me, it's basically how bitcoin works.
  - aeturnum 2y ago
    I think the puzzle idea is that, if you could figure out a weakness in the hash, you could claim it faster than the brute force approach. So each prize that's claimed "on schedule" supports the idea that there aren't any widely known shortcuts. Obviously if you found a shortcut in the hash you might do other things first, but I think that's the idea.
    - IshKebab 2y ago
      Hmm yeah if I cracked Bitcoin then last thing I'd do is claim a prize that gave away the fact that I'd cracked Bitcoin.
      - mr_mitm 2y ago
        There is a difference between a weakness and complete breakage. You might have a small edge over brute force, but not enough to reverse any public key. This acts like a canary for weaknesses.
      - dylan604 2y ago
        some people just want the cred though. their name will be immortal and live through history as being something, or some such nonsense that feeds an ego. also, if you were the type that thinks bitcoin is lame, this could be a way of undermining the concept to the point that people no longer use it because it's not secure as it was touted
      - throwawaymaths 2y ago
        What you would do is claim the prize slightly ahead of schedule and wait to be slightly ahead of schedule for the next one.
      - 2y ago
- deleted 2y ago
  [deleted]
- Sandworm5639 2y ago
  Is it known who set it up and for what purpose?
- n2d4 2y ago
  For those curious, the reason why a public key lets you find a private key more efficiently is Pollard's rho algorithm: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pollard%27s_rho_algorithm_for_logarithms https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pollard%27s_rho_algorithm_for_...
  - CamperBob2 2y ago
    These keys are based on elliptic curves rather than products of primes, aren't they?
    - matthewdgreen 2y ago
      There is one rho algorithm for discrete logarithms and one for factoring. Published three years apart.
      - sltkr 2y ago
        Neither of which helps with elliptic curve cryptography.
        arcastroe 2y ago
        the problem of finding discrete logarithms is the same problem as breaking elliptic curve cryptography.
        GTP 2y ago
        Technically, while the two problems share the same name, the one on elliptic curves is matematically different from the one over finite fields modulo a prime number.
        deleted 2y ago
        [deleted]
        AnotherGoodName 2y ago
- mapt 2y ago
  Am I correct in assuming that beyond a certain point, this is basically an existence proof for somebody having a quantum-supreme solution to Shor's Algorithm? "Here's $400,000 sitting on the table, hope nobody takes it" which triggers an alarm telling us to replace all our old prequantum cryptography.
  - n2d4 2y ago
    Or someone "just" finding a fault in the cryptographic algorithms used in Bitcoin. Or whoever created the puzzles leaking their information.
    - sigmoid10 2y ago
      >Or whoever created the puzzles leaking their information. Or getting hacked. This is super common among people who are known to have high value wallets. Between physical attacks and zero days in everyday software, there's no chance to stay safe when you put that kind of target on your back.
      - owl57 2y ago
        Is it likely that these particular private keys were wiped ~immediately after creation?
      - Powdering7082 2y ago
        > there's no chance to stay safe when you put that kind of target on your back. Vitalik Buterin seems to be a counter example here, his net worth peaked around $1.46 billion. He has some interesting writing on how he stays secure. At one point the SHIBA token sent a huge amount of funds to his cold wallet and he details what he did to securely access those funds: https://decrypt.co/91000/ethereum-founder-vitalik-buterin-dumped-7-billion-shib-how-why https://decrypt.co/91000/ethereum-founder-vitalik-buterin-du... > The funds, he said, were initially in a cold wallet in the form of two numbers written on separate pieces of paper. Buterin said he had to combine the two numbers to get the private key. "One of those numbers was with me; the other number was with my family in Canada," he said. "So I had to call up my family in Canada and tell them to read their number to me." > Buterin said that he entered the numbers into the computer he purchased from Target after putting the two numbers together. "I sent my ETH out by generating a transaction and then on a computer that I bought from Tarjay [Target] for about $300 bucks for just this purpose." > Before disconnecting the laptop from the internet entirely, Buterin said he downloaded a program to generate QR codes. After generating the Ethereum transaction, he scanned the QR code with his phone, copied it to the laptop, and then put it into etherscan.io/push Tx. Finally, Buterin said he began sending out the tokens.
- red_admiral 2y ago
  Curious to know because I've never looked into this stuff: doesn't the _public_ key have to be available anyway so you can send the coins to the address in the first place and have that recorded on the ledger?
  - tomtomtom777 2y ago
    A wallet address (where money is sent to) is the public key hashed. This money can than be spent with a transaction containing both the signature and the public key. This is one of the reasons it is advised never to reuse an address. After using it once, your private key may still be private but your public key is exposed, reducing security.
    - red_admiral 2y ago
      Thanks. The "hashed" part is what I was missing.
  - aeonik 2y ago
    Once you have the private key, you would submit a transaction with that private key and authorize a transaction to a public key that you control, and doesn't have part of the private key available. You don't need the public key, and IIRC most algorithms allow you to derive the public key from the private key, though I'm not sure that's the case with Bitcoin. I have vague memories that there are algorithms where this is not that case, but it's been a while.
    - red_admiral 2y ago
      It's some kind of EC/DSA scheme, isn't it? Then from the private key you can indeed get the public key.
      - mistrial9 2y ago
        Is this true? from an ECDSA private key you could derive many possible public keys? asking for a friend
- derangedHorse 2y ago
  I think you're mixing up the concept of entropy. The entropy is the measure of randomness in the data and with more entropy, the harder cryptographic schemes are to break. Going back to your comment, the asserted 130 bits of entropy in the key would be harder to break than 65 bits. I'm also unclear on where you got the 'multiple of 5' bit about. It seems the keys corresponding to numbers divisible by 5 were used in a spend transaction by the puzzle creator. Using those addresses in spend transactions reveals the public key and saves compute that would be wasted hashing. It also enables direct attacks using Pollard's rho (which someone already posted a link for above). Src: https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=1306983.msg51466379#msg51466379 https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=1306983.msg51466379#... https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pollard%27s_rho_algorithm_for_logarithms https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pollard%27s_rho_algorithm_for_... Another interesting discussion on bitcointalk about using Pollard's kangaroo: https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=5244940.0 https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=5244940.0
- dheera 2y ago
  It seems #125 is already solved? If so don't they have the power to solve #67, 68, 69?
- HPsquared 2y ago
  So exponential increase in difficulty, linear increase in reward. Unless the price goes exponential too! (Which was the case for a while)
  - Cthulhu_ 2y ago
    Yes, but computer performance also goes up exponentially - especially when GPUs and ASICs were built and optimized for the maths needed for crypto - so in a sense they're keeping up. In theory.
  - fidelramos 2y ago
    My take on this [0] is that Bitcoin price was growing exponentially with demand, or more exactly with the expected future demand. Cryptocurrency always have had a lot of speculation behind them, not unlike any startup, and that is OK. As shown by the graph [0], adoption slowed down after 2016 when BTC blocks got consistently full and transaction fees rose to $50 and more. I believe if BTC had scaled to support more transactions the price would be much higher today, as Bitcoin would likely be used as a means of payment across the Internet and in many physical stores at well. Discussions regarding the decentralization of larger blocks aside, something that is not clear to many people is that scaling a blockchain to handle more transactions doesn't mean a linear increase in energy use. In the case of BTC its Proof-of-Work algorithm operates over the root of the last block's Merkle tree, which is a hash of all the transactions in the block. Being a fixed-size hash it doesn't matter if the block contains 1,000, 1 million or 1 billion transactions. Arguably a more popular Bitcoin would be more valuable and therefore would attract more miners, increasing its energy consumption, but that just reinforces my original point. [0] https://x.com/ampajaro/status/1782850107529973990 https://x.com/ampajaro/status/1782850107529973990
    - GTP 2y ago
      I think you're describing Bitcoin Cash, but AFAIK it's worth less than original BTC. What you're not considering is the brand value of BTC being the first and most famous crypto currency.
      - 2y ago
- keepamovin 2y ago
  Wow, that thread is nuts. Scrolled up just a bit saw this. My new public key search system is almost ready. I had to reinvent my binary database system because, although the database was lightweight https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=5475626 https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=5475626, I had efficiency issues with binary search. This is now a thing of the past. I have designed a system that stores 100 million public keys in an 80 KB file, yes, what you read 80KB!(in the future it will be smaller) that meets maximum efficiency. We would only be limited by the current speed of Secp256k1 when generating the 100 million or more public keys while creating the database. I am finishing designing the search script after months of being stuck due to personal issues, I am finally back on track. I love these kind of mad inventor rabbit hole corners of the Internet. Kind of brings back the 90s for me when everything was exciting.
  - orf 2y ago
    > This is now a thing of the past. I have designed a system that stores 100 million public keys in an 80 KB file That’s 0.0064 bits per public key - so either there are lots of duplicates, or something is amiss here? Edit: they don’t actually store the keys, so the quote is misleading.
    - keepamovin 2y ago
      “That quote is misleading” Hahaha! :)
    - bdamm 2y ago
      Presumably there is a generator function that maps key IDs into actual keys that can be re-computed at will.
      - orf 2y ago
        How could this work with less than 1 bit of data per key? Assuming there are no duplicates, which is a sensible assumption, you’d need a minimum of 100,000,000 bits to store 100,000,000 unique entries larger than 1 bit with even a perfect hash function.
- Dylan16807 2y ago
  Note: The size of the puzzle is the number of unknown bits plus one, because the top bit is always set. Puzzle #66 had 65 unknown bits.
- danielfisher77 2y ago
  [dead]
rboyd 2y ago
probably discussed in the bitcointalk thread, but how do we know it's not just the creator of the puzzle reclaiming his own bitcoin?
- altairprime 2y ago
  By what means might you prove or disprove this theory?
  - stonegray 2y ago
    Having the the solver post all 2^66 -2 incorrect private keys would prove that they solved it fairly and had no prior knowledge of the key. You'd just need to download the 6,505,548 TB list of keys and re-derive the public key for each to check that they're valid; unfortunately it would take in the ballpark of a kiloyear of compute time assuming you have 3x RTX 3090s.
- daedrdev 2y ago
  It got stolen from the original solver by someone who noticed the transaction and posted a bigger fee
totallyunknown 2y ago
This is just sick.
- whiterknight 2y ago
  Why?
  - amelius 2y ago
    Can't we come up with puzzles where at least something of value is created when the puzzle is solved (and a tremendous amount of resources is not wasted)?
    - commodoreboxer 2y ago
      We can and do, all the time. And all puzzles are a "waste of resources", really. I'm not into crypto and I do think Bitcoin is stupid and wasteful, but I don't find it "sick" or all what upsetting that this kind of puzzle exists, though I think some smart contract-based Ethereum puzzles could be much more interesting, demanding solutions to more interesting problems that don't directly relate to the blockchain itself. Imagine a smart contract with a pot anybody can pay into that pays out to whoever could crack a particular previously unsolvable problem. Basically a public bounty. The only downside is that it has to be a problem that can be validated algorithmically.
      - wruza 2y ago
        Puzzles are training and intellectual entertainment, something you cannot have a web server without, cause sad nerds are unproductive.
      - kelnos 2y ago
        This isn't really a puzzle, though. A puzzle requires intellectual curiosity and creativity to solve. This was just a race to see who could burn the most CPU/GPU cycles the fastest. Even when a real puzzle has a monetary reward for solving it, a big component of the reward is the solving itself. For this, the reward is just money.
gizmo385 2y ago
Is there something unique or special about the private keys that are guessed? This seems like an incredibly wasteful allocation of compute (which wouldn’t be surprising given that it’s bitcoin but still)
- p4bl0 2y ago
  I had the same reaction. Isn't Bitcoin wasting enough energy as it is?
  - sammy2255 2y ago
    What if it’s 100% green energy? Is it a waste?
    - jgalt212 2y ago
      It's all one energy market however. It's a bit a of rough approximation, but green energy wasted on unnecessary purposes is green energy not used for necessary things.
    - dodoisdodo 2y ago
      You still have to pay infrastructure deprecation costs, financing costs and labor costs.
    - monkeyfun 2y ago
      There may not be a continuous fuel expenditure, but there is a maintenance cost for the grid infrastructure, keeping panels or turbines in good working condition, etc. -- not to mention the manufacturing costs and, since no organizations are currently engaged in microwave power transmission from solar-power satellites in space -- not insignificant associated monetary and opportunity costs to the land used. Conclusion: yes, it's still a waste, unless that energy was surplus absolutely not going to be used for anything better or able to be stored, although even then the compute resources could have probably been used for more useful problems.
    - LadyCailin 2y ago
gosub100 2y ago
somewhat-related: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/RSA_Factoring_Challenge https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/RSA_Factoring_Challenge
cj 2y ago
Interesting: Reading the first page of the bitcointalk forum, the puzzle originated from this wallet, which has an incredible amount of volume going through it. 10,000+ transactions and over a million BTC sent/received. https://www.blockchain.com/explorer/addresses/btc/173ujrhEVGqaZvPHXLqwXiSmPVMo225cqT https://www.blockchain.com/explorer/addresses/btc/173ujrhEVG...
- AureliusMA 2y ago
  Probably an exchange wallet ?
  - Jerrrrrrry 2y ago
    bug bounty wallet by a consensus of the anointed
ivanjermakov 2y ago
Who is paying to the puzzle solvers?
- horacemorace 2y ago
  Everyone who trades fiat for crypto.
- doctorwhat 2y ago
  Three letters agencies? Could be a nice way to find out if a foreign entity has an enormous brute-force capability? But more likely I'd say they got their bitcoin back when a core2duo was enough to generate a few of them overnight...
  - cmcaleer 2y ago
    Prize pool would have to be much more than $400k to justify a state actor flexing that kind of capability, NK makes far more than that exploiting DeFi protocols.
- PcChip 2y ago
  The btc has been in the wallet since the puzzle was created
- lm28469 2y ago
  The person who created the wallets in 2015 when BTC wasn't worth much
Dwedit 2y ago
Do they have a buyer for that $400k? If not, it's not worth $400K.
- Powdering7082 2y ago
  24h Volume: $9,800,480,342 Liquidity of less than a million worth of BTC hasn't been a problem for a long time
- somebodythere 2y ago
  The market is liquid enough to absorb a sale for $400K.
  - btcpuzzle888 2y ago
    [dead]
- thfuran 2y ago
  Bitcoin is more than liquid enough to offload a half dozen without issue.
- FileSorter 2y ago
  One of the most profoundly dumb comments I have read here. It takes 3 seconds to look up the 24h volume for BTC and it is $9.6 Billion
  - jakobov 2y ago
    Dont be mean
  - latchkey 2y ago
    No matter how dumb it is, in general, it is always better to just respond with the answer and not comment on the comment itself. https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html "Be kind. Don't be snarky. Converse curiously; don't cross-examine. Edit out swipes."
  - 2y ago
odyssey7 2y ago
What category of taxable income would this be in the US?
- bornfreddy 2y ago
  Asking for a friend?
  - odyssey7 2y ago
    I wish.
- greyface- 2y ago
  1040 Schedule 1 Line 8(z) "Other income" IANAL, etc.
- jncfhnb 2y ago
  Losses due to theft
arcanemachiner 2y ago
Looks like the coins were stolen by a bot: > https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=1306983.msg64535839#msg64535839 https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=1306983.msg64535839#... I'm not super familiar with the concept (and I'm too lazy to look into it TBH), but I think the would-be winner posted the private key before enough (any?) blocks were mined, and the thief posted a transaction with a bigger fee, and the thief's transaction was in the block that got mined.
- kneel 2y ago
  That's not how bitcoin works
  - ffsm8 2y ago
    Feel free to click on the link.
  - dartos 2y ago
    That’s exactly how bitcoins works. As a miner, if I see two conflicting transactions I will prioritize the one which pays more rather than the one I saw first.
    - dheera 2y ago
      So can I avoid the attack by voluntarily paying a super high fee?
      - therein 2y ago
        Yeah unless the miner favors the other transaction for personal reasons.
      - baobabKoodaa 2y ago
        The attacker can see what fee you are offering, so they just offer higher
      - dartos 2y ago
thundergolfer 2y ago
We had fraudsters using modal.com compute to solve this challenge. It's not traditional mining software so it didn't initially get flagged, but we've updated our detection to catch it now[1]. 1. https://modal.com/blog/catching-cryptominers https://modal.com/blog/catching-cryptominers
- ggrelet 2y ago
  Just here to say I think modal is really cool. Keep up the good work!
- mmsc 2y ago
  Your blog 404s when an iPhone user uses lockdown mode. In fact your whole website fails to load.
- buildbuildbuild 2y ago
  Context: these users were not paying, were using stolen credit card numbers.
- ficklepickle 2y ago
  FYI something is wrong with your client side routing. From the blog post, clicking on your logo, the URL updates to the homepage but the content doesn't change til I do a full page reload.
iJohnDoe 2y ago
Can someone EILI5? I thought cracking anything to steal bitcoin was impossible due to the keys sizes involved? Is this possible because a portion of the key is already available so there is less to crack? Which key is known? The public or private? Another comment said the “now known public” but then also said the private key can now be recovered by cracking it? Two keys need to be cracked? What kind computing power is needed to crack both keys and how long? Thanks. Sorry, I’m an idiot when it comes to bitcoin.
- CamperBob2 2y ago
  As I understand it, they are basically private keys. The idea is to find the wallet address that they go with. Once that is done, the winner can create a transaction that sends the contents of the wallet to their own as a prize. This would normally be computationally intractable but these keys are much smaller than normal, with most of their leading digits intentionally zeroed out to make it easier to 'steal' the funds from the corresponding wallet. If anyone knows who set this up, or why, they aren't talking. In the process of creating the transaction to claim the prize, the winner must generate a corresponding public key based on some sort of hash of the private key and wallet address. I don't know how they can tell when they've succeeded; hopefully someone else can clarify/correct this point. But once they do succeed, the transaction is then posted in public to allow miners to add it to the blockchain. Unfortunately, due to mathematical witchfuckery, knowledge of both the private key and a valid public key makes it possible to solve the puzzle as if the already-shortened private key had half the number of bits. In that case, finding the wallet address might take only a minute or two on a standard GPU rather than the months of time on a whole warehouse full of them that the original winner had to spend. Knowing this, people who are bad and who should feel bad set up bots to watch for the prize-claiming transactions. The bots are designed to recompute the source wallet address independently and front-run the winner's transaction by resubmitting it for the benefit of the thief, using a higher reward to incentivize miners to prioritize their transaction over their original one. Bitcoin blocks are mined about every 20 minutes, so on average the thief has about 10 minutes to create an overriding transaction once the original transaction is posted. Sucks to be the winner who expended so much effort to claim the prize, as they are now out about $400K. Nothing left but a huge electric bill.
mrb 2y ago
Another good resource on these puzzles: https://privatekeys.pw/puzzles/bitcoin-puzzle-tx https://privatekeys.pw/puzzles/bitcoin-puzzle-tx
gzer0 2y ago
Whoever solved it left a rather intriguing, albeit slightly mocking, message: TX input: Code: 1FuckUmT5yBAvozf6gT8GRQVbJ7iBDUnrH TX outputs: Code: 1Jvv4yWkE9MhbuwGU66666666669sugEF 0.00000001 1YouAreSoDumbLoL666666666667K5aR4 0.00000002 1WhatWereUThinking6666666662wkqq1 0.00000003 1YouDeserveNothing6666666665sbbBC 0.00000004 1YouEpicFaiLure66666666666688GSDA 0.00000005 1BitchAssLoser66666666666669dBUVg 0.00000006 1AndEveryoneELse666666666669Vnc8C 0.00000007 1ThisisALosingGame6666666667HAZdf 0.00000008 1JustGetAReaLJob666666666665vGKVD 0.00000009 1YoureWastingTimeAndMoney664CVExC 0.00000010 1AndCausingCLimateChange6666HK8Qc 0.00000011 13zb1hQbWVsc2S7ZTZnP2G4undNNpdh5so 0.00000012 1Jvv4yWkE9MhbuwGUoqFYzDjRVQHaLWuJd 0.00000013 1FK5PjPNARQmg94n2cNHTo9417kWfXUDBQ 0.00002125
- throwawayffffas 2y ago
  It's not particularly intriguing, he is trash talking the competition.
  - throwaway314155 2y ago
    that it's relatively self aware, in particular about energy consumption concerns, is mildly intriguing i think
    - fsckboy 2y ago
      the global warming consensus dominates the public discourse, the idea that somebody involved in crypto is not aware of energy consumption is a bit absurd
      - deleted 2y ago
        [deleted]
    - Quindecillion 2y ago
      What's wrong with energy consumption? I think you might be confusing it with greenhouse gas emissions.
wodenokoto 2y ago
That’s not a trivial price. Who finance these puzzles?
- y42 2y ago
  It's somewhere hidden in those million threads. The puzzle was created 10 years ago when Bitcoin was cheap.
  - shoshino 2y ago
    > 2023-04-16: somebody (maybe the owner) increased the unsolved puzzles prizes again by x10. Now the puzzle #66 prize is 6.6 BTC, #67 is 6.7 BTC and so on... puzzle #160 prize is 16 BTC. https://www.blockchain.com/explorer/transactions/btc/12f34b58b04dfb0233ce889f674781c0e0c7ba95482cca469125af41a78d13b3 https://www.blockchain.com/explorer/transactions/btc/12f34b5... Bitcoin was not cheap in 2023, this is someone with $50m to spare!
deleted 2y ago
[deleted]
DreadPriateRob 2y ago
my assumption is the only way you will be able to stop any bot from double spend attack is to multisig the puzzle address when its solved so any transaction there forth would need your main wallets or any wallet that you set up to need its signature or signature(s) if using multiple before any transactions are made but you will need to be quick about it maybe even setting up your own script or bot to do so i find it wild that the solver didn't think that someone could swoop in and take the reward i multisig all my addresses for that very reason and yes i know a lot about mutisig it's impossible to use a double spend attack with that set up
patagnome 2y ago
ref: https://wiki.p2pfoundation.net/Arthur_Brock_Against_the_Consensus_on_Data_Consensus_in_the_Blockchain https://wiki.p2pfoundation.net/Arthur_Brock_Against_the_Cons...
Meganet 2y ago
So while this is going on https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Vl6VhCAeEfQ https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Vl6VhCAeEfQ (ted talk) a lot of people created co2 to take part in a btc lottery and the winner was now randomly found. I hate crypto :|
- amjnsx 2y ago
  It’s easy to put those two pieces of information together and arrive at crypto bad. I think it’s worth noting that bitcoin uses a fraction of the energy required to mine gold for example. It’s also a driving force in renewables, by stabilising energy grids (mining can use the spare capacity during quiet periods and switch off during peak hours). So I don’t think it’s as black and white as “bitcoin uses energy = bad”
  - Meganet 2y ago
    Bitcoin doesn't stabilize the power grid. Its stupid greewashing. There is no motivation for a Bitcoin miner to leverage 'overenergy' the only motivation is to get cheap energy as much as possible. In NYC they bought a Gas power plant only for bitcoin. In Texas they had to pay millions to bitcoin miners for them to shut down. In china they stole power from normal people left and right. It also allows to sell local limited energy globally and pushing energy into the trading/gambling area. Instead of giving local people cheap energy, some bitcoin miner will try to get as much of that cheap energy possible. It also incentivives using bitcoin miners to use flare gas instead of doing something to actually capture and use it as it is a limited resource. Nonetheless PoW is stupid. its the worst scenario we can come up with in a society with scare resources and a very limited co2 budget by now ( have you watched the TED talk? ). And at the end bitcoins PoW system even still stand on our existing PoW system. Someone stole your bitcoins? You go to the police... Without our existing PoS System, you would need to keep your bitcoin wallet and address always anonyme otherwise you would trust our law and order (part of our PoS system) and you could literaly only send bitcoins around and nothing else. (Smart contracts are also not scalable and not stable solution to this issue). Btw. yes gold need energy to be mined but its a one time cost YOU HAVE TO DO to use this material. Bitcoin is a Waste Resource all the time to use. And Gold has real value in science, manufacturing and in styling/model/art. Nonetheless we need to get the co2 production of Gold down and Bitcoin we just don't need. The best solution is to get rid of bitcoin and keep reducing co2 production for gold. And yes i do have a lot more arguments on why bitcoin is useless.
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y42 2y ago
What I don't understand, hopefully someone is still reading it here: The hint says this: >> First output: take random number from 2^0 upto 2^1-1, use it as private key >> Second output: take random number from 2^1 upto 2^2-1, use it as private key >> Third output: take random number from 2^2 upto 2^3-1, use it as private key To me it sounds like that wallet #10 has a range from 2^9 to 2^10 - 1 - so you don't actually need to check previous bits. But somehow it seems like everyone is crawling through the whole range of possible private key. Doesn't make sense, does it? Am I missing something?
- Dylan16807 2y ago
  What do you mean by previous bits? Where are you seeing how "everyone is crawling"? With each puzzle, you know that the top bit is 1, and nothing else. Every bit below that is unknown, and you need to go through the whole range of n-1 bits. Puzzle #10 has 9 bits to guess, because it's between 10_0000_0000 and 11_1111_1111. Puzzle #66 has 65 bits to guess. If someone says 66 unknown bits they've misspoken.
  - y42 2y ago
    yeah, thats what i meant, just to make clear "how" I am thinking it: It's just iterating through integers from n to k and calculating secp256k1, sha-256 and ripemd. So: >> Puzzle #10 has 9 bits to guess, because it's between 10_0000_0000 and 11_1111_1111 means that I don't have to start at 0000 0000 0000 ... everytime, I can actually start at 2^5 and look up to 2^6 - 1, for example for the 6th address.
    - Dylan16807 2y ago
      But show me someone that's starting at zero? You said it "seems like everyone" is doing that. Where?
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mrb 2y ago

Discussion thread here: https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=1306983.msg64526037#msg64526037 https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=1306983.msg64526037#... Bitcoin puzzles are private keys with just a few unknown bits so that anyone can bruteforce them to collect a reward. Puzzle 66 contained 66 unknown bits and had 6.6 BTC deposited into it by the initial puzzle creator. The private key was 0x000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000002832ed74f2b5e35ee or 256 bits with mostly zeroes but 66 random ones. The next Bitcoin puzzle, #67, has 67 unknown bits, and contains 6.7 BTC up for grabs: https://www.blockchain.com/explorer/addresses/btc/1BY8GQbnueYofwSuFAT3USAhGjPrkxDdW9 https://www.blockchain.com/explorer/addresses/btc/1BY8GQbnue... The previous puzzle by order of difficulty was #64 (not #65, because see below) and was solved on 9/9/2022, so about 2 years ago. In other words, it took about 2 years of compute time to run the 2^66 bruteforcing task. Puzzles that are multiple of 5 (#65 or #70) are special: they have twice more entropy. So that private key #65 doesn't have 65-bit of entropy but 130-bit of entropy. And the creator of the puzzle intentionally published their public key on the blockchain. When you know the public key, brutetforcing the n-bit private key only requires 2^(n/2) work. So puzzle #65 with a 130-bit key actually require bruteforcing up to only 2^65 keys.

wslh 2y ago
New to this puzzle! Do you have a more detailed resource to the puzzle? Is it basically brute forcing based on all public keys available on the Bitcoin blockchain? Could this be considered stealing?
- mrb 2y ago
  Sure, here is a nice little presentation on the puzzle: https://rya.nc/forensic-bitcoin-cracking.html https://rya.nc/forensic-bitcoin-cracking.html The main discussion thread on the bitcoin forum is this but it has a low signal-to-noise ratio: https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=1306983.0 https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=1306983.0 There is a secondary thread here: https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=5218972.0 https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=5218972.0 The point of the puzzle is indeed to brute force some private keys (not public keys), but not all, as 2^256 is computationally impossible. The private keys that have been discovered so far have obviously many zeros in them, so in practice you are never going to accidentally steal from a legitimate address with actually 256 bits of entropy. The creator of the puzzle is anonymous and never came forward (to my knowledge). The point of the puzzle is (1) to be a fun game, and (2) to be a publicly observable way of measuring current brute forcing capabilities.
  - wslh 2y ago
    First, a question: is there something similar for other blockchains? And, a clarification, when I said public keys I referred to public keys that match an unknown private key but I understand now (am I correct?) that this puzzle is purely brute forcing private keys with a lot of zeroes and then matching with the addresses in the blockchain (which would be a function from the public key).
    - mrb 2y ago
      I don't know if other blockchains have these puzzles. You are correct thas this puzzle is brute forcing private keys with a bunch of zeroes, from which a public key can be calculated.
    - thisconnect 2y ago
ForHackernews 2y ago
Is this a "puzzle"? Throwing compute at brute-forcing a random number doesn't seem like solving a puzzle to me, it's basically how bitcoin works.
- aeturnum 2y ago
  I think the puzzle idea is that, if you could figure out a weakness in the hash, you could claim it faster than the brute force approach. So each prize that's claimed "on schedule" supports the idea that there aren't any widely known shortcuts. Obviously if you found a shortcut in the hash you might do other things first, but I think that's the idea.
  - IshKebab 2y ago
    Hmm yeah if I cracked Bitcoin then last thing I'd do is claim a prize that gave away the fact that I'd cracked Bitcoin.
    - mr_mitm 2y ago
      There is a difference between a weakness and complete breakage. You might have a small edge over brute force, but not enough to reverse any public key. This acts like a canary for weaknesses.
    - dylan604 2y ago
      some people just want the cred though. their name will be immortal and live through history as being something, or some such nonsense that feeds an ego. also, if you were the type that thinks bitcoin is lame, this could be a way of undermining the concept to the point that people no longer use it because it's not secure as it was touted
    - throwawaymaths 2y ago
      What you would do is claim the prize slightly ahead of schedule and wait to be slightly ahead of schedule for the next one.
    - 2y ago
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Sandworm5639 2y ago
Is it known who set it up and for what purpose?
n2d4 2y ago
For those curious, the reason why a public key lets you find a private key more efficiently is Pollard's rho algorithm: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pollard%27s_rho_algorithm_for_logarithms https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pollard%27s_rho_algorithm_for_...
- CamperBob2 2y ago
  These keys are based on elliptic curves rather than products of primes, aren't they?
  - matthewdgreen 2y ago
    There is one rho algorithm for discrete logarithms and one for factoring. Published three years apart.
    - sltkr 2y ago
      Neither of which helps with elliptic curve cryptography.
      - arcastroe 2y ago
        the problem of finding discrete logarithms is the same problem as breaking elliptic curve cryptography.
        GTP 2y ago
        Technically, while the two problems share the same name, the one on elliptic curves is matematically different from the one over finite fields modulo a prime number.
        deleted 2y ago
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        AnotherGoodName 2y ago
mapt 2y ago
Am I correct in assuming that beyond a certain point, this is basically an existence proof for somebody having a quantum-supreme solution to Shor's Algorithm? "Here's $400,000 sitting on the table, hope nobody takes it" which triggers an alarm telling us to replace all our old prequantum cryptography.
- n2d4 2y ago
  Or someone "just" finding a fault in the cryptographic algorithms used in Bitcoin. Or whoever created the puzzles leaking their information.
  - sigmoid10 2y ago
    >Or whoever created the puzzles leaking their information. Or getting hacked. This is super common among people who are known to have high value wallets. Between physical attacks and zero days in everyday software, there's no chance to stay safe when you put that kind of target on your back.
    - owl57 2y ago
      Is it likely that these particular private keys were wiped ~immediately after creation?
    - Powdering7082 2y ago
      > there's no chance to stay safe when you put that kind of target on your back. Vitalik Buterin seems to be a counter example here, his net worth peaked around $1.46 billion. He has some interesting writing on how he stays secure. At one point the SHIBA token sent a huge amount of funds to his cold wallet and he details what he did to securely access those funds: https://decrypt.co/91000/ethereum-founder-vitalik-buterin-dumped-7-billion-shib-how-why https://decrypt.co/91000/ethereum-founder-vitalik-buterin-du... > The funds, he said, were initially in a cold wallet in the form of two numbers written on separate pieces of paper. Buterin said he had to combine the two numbers to get the private key. "One of those numbers was with me; the other number was with my family in Canada," he said. "So I had to call up my family in Canada and tell them to read their number to me." > Buterin said that he entered the numbers into the computer he purchased from Target after putting the two numbers together. "I sent my ETH out by generating a transaction and then on a computer that I bought from Tarjay [Target] for about $300 bucks for just this purpose." > Before disconnecting the laptop from the internet entirely, Buterin said he downloaded a program to generate QR codes. After generating the Ethereum transaction, he scanned the QR code with his phone, copied it to the laptop, and then put it into etherscan.io/push Tx. Finally, Buterin said he began sending out the tokens.
red_admiral 2y ago
Curious to know because I've never looked into this stuff: doesn't the _public_ key have to be available anyway so you can send the coins to the address in the first place and have that recorded on the ledger?
- tomtomtom777 2y ago
  A wallet address (where money is sent to) is the public key hashed. This money can than be spent with a transaction containing both the signature and the public key. This is one of the reasons it is advised never to reuse an address. After using it once, your private key may still be private but your public key is exposed, reducing security.
  - red_admiral 2y ago
    Thanks. The "hashed" part is what I was missing.
- aeonik 2y ago
  Once you have the private key, you would submit a transaction with that private key and authorize a transaction to a public key that you control, and doesn't have part of the private key available. You don't need the public key, and IIRC most algorithms allow you to derive the public key from the private key, though I'm not sure that's the case with Bitcoin. I have vague memories that there are algorithms where this is not that case, but it's been a while.
  - red_admiral 2y ago
    It's some kind of EC/DSA scheme, isn't it? Then from the private key you can indeed get the public key.
    - mistrial9 2y ago
      Is this true? from an ECDSA private key you could derive many possible public keys? asking for a friend
derangedHorse 2y ago
I think you're mixing up the concept of entropy. The entropy is the measure of randomness in the data and with more entropy, the harder cryptographic schemes are to break. Going back to your comment, the asserted 130 bits of entropy in the key would be harder to break than 65 bits. I'm also unclear on where you got the 'multiple of 5' bit about. It seems the keys corresponding to numbers divisible by 5 were used in a spend transaction by the puzzle creator. Using those addresses in spend transactions reveals the public key and saves compute that would be wasted hashing. It also enables direct attacks using Pollard's rho (which someone already posted a link for above). Src: https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=1306983.msg51466379#msg51466379 https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=1306983.msg51466379#... https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pollard%27s_rho_algorithm_for_logarithms https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pollard%27s_rho_algorithm_for_... Another interesting discussion on bitcointalk about using Pollard's kangaroo: https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=5244940.0 https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=5244940.0
dheera 2y ago
It seems #125 is already solved? If so don't they have the power to solve #67, 68, 69?
HPsquared 2y ago
So exponential increase in difficulty, linear increase in reward. Unless the price goes exponential too! (Which was the case for a while)
- Cthulhu_ 2y ago
  Yes, but computer performance also goes up exponentially - especially when GPUs and ASICs were built and optimized for the maths needed for crypto - so in a sense they're keeping up. In theory.
- fidelramos 2y ago
  My take on this [0] is that Bitcoin price was growing exponentially with demand, or more exactly with the expected future demand. Cryptocurrency always have had a lot of speculation behind them, not unlike any startup, and that is OK. As shown by the graph [0], adoption slowed down after 2016 when BTC blocks got consistently full and transaction fees rose to $50 and more. I believe if BTC had scaled to support more transactions the price would be much higher today, as Bitcoin would likely be used as a means of payment across the Internet and in many physical stores at well. Discussions regarding the decentralization of larger blocks aside, something that is not clear to many people is that scaling a blockchain to handle more transactions doesn't mean a linear increase in energy use. In the case of BTC its Proof-of-Work algorithm operates over the root of the last block's Merkle tree, which is a hash of all the transactions in the block. Being a fixed-size hash it doesn't matter if the block contains 1,000, 1 million or 1 billion transactions. Arguably a more popular Bitcoin would be more valuable and therefore would attract more miners, increasing its energy consumption, but that just reinforces my original point. [0] https://x.com/ampajaro/status/1782850107529973990 https://x.com/ampajaro/status/1782850107529973990
  - GTP 2y ago
    I think you're describing Bitcoin Cash, but AFAIK it's worth less than original BTC. What you're not considering is the brand value of BTC being the first and most famous crypto currency.
    - 2y ago
keepamovin 2y ago
Wow, that thread is nuts. Scrolled up just a bit saw this. My new public key search system is almost ready. I had to reinvent my binary database system because, although the database was lightweight https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=5475626 https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=5475626, I had efficiency issues with binary search. This is now a thing of the past. I have designed a system that stores 100 million public keys in an 80 KB file, yes, what you read 80KB!(in the future it will be smaller) that meets maximum efficiency. We would only be limited by the current speed of Secp256k1 when generating the 100 million or more public keys while creating the database. I am finishing designing the search script after months of being stuck due to personal issues, I am finally back on track. I love these kind of mad inventor rabbit hole corners of the Internet. Kind of brings back the 90s for me when everything was exciting.
- orf 2y ago
  > This is now a thing of the past. I have designed a system that stores 100 million public keys in an 80 KB file That’s 0.0064 bits per public key - so either there are lots of duplicates, or something is amiss here? Edit: they don’t actually store the keys, so the quote is misleading.
  - keepamovin 2y ago
    “That quote is misleading” Hahaha! :)
  - bdamm 2y ago
    Presumably there is a generator function that maps key IDs into actual keys that can be re-computed at will.
    - orf 2y ago
      How could this work with less than 1 bit of data per key? Assuming there are no duplicates, which is a sensible assumption, you’d need a minimum of 100,000,000 bits to store 100,000,000 unique entries larger than 1 bit with even a perfect hash function.
Dylan16807 2y ago
Note: The size of the puzzle is the number of unknown bits plus one, because the top bit is always set. Puzzle #66 had 65 unknown bits.
danielfisher77 2y ago
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rboyd 2y ago

probably discussed in the bitcointalk thread, but how do we know it's not just the creator of the puzzle reclaiming his own bitcoin?

altairprime 2y ago
By what means might you prove or disprove this theory?
- stonegray 2y ago
  Having the the solver post all 2^66 -2 incorrect private keys would prove that they solved it fairly and had no prior knowledge of the key. You'd just need to download the 6,505,548 TB list of keys and re-derive the public key for each to check that they're valid; unfortunately it would take in the ballpark of a kiloyear of compute time assuming you have 3x RTX 3090s.
daedrdev 2y ago
It got stolen from the original solver by someone who noticed the transaction and posted a bigger fee

totallyunknown 2y ago

This is just sick.

whiterknight 2y ago
Why?
- amelius 2y ago
  Can't we come up with puzzles where at least something of value is created when the puzzle is solved (and a tremendous amount of resources is not wasted)?
  - commodoreboxer 2y ago
    We can and do, all the time. And all puzzles are a "waste of resources", really. I'm not into crypto and I do think Bitcoin is stupid and wasteful, but I don't find it "sick" or all what upsetting that this kind of puzzle exists, though I think some smart contract-based Ethereum puzzles could be much more interesting, demanding solutions to more interesting problems that don't directly relate to the blockchain itself. Imagine a smart contract with a pot anybody can pay into that pays out to whoever could crack a particular previously unsolvable problem. Basically a public bounty. The only downside is that it has to be a problem that can be validated algorithmically.
    - wruza 2y ago
      Puzzles are training and intellectual entertainment, something you cannot have a web server without, cause sad nerds are unproductive.
    - kelnos 2y ago
      This isn't really a puzzle, though. A puzzle requires intellectual curiosity and creativity to solve. This was just a race to see who could burn the most CPU/GPU cycles the fastest. Even when a real puzzle has a monetary reward for solving it, a big component of the reward is the solving itself. For this, the reward is just money.

gizmo385 2y ago

Is there something unique or special about the private keys that are guessed? This seems like an incredibly wasteful allocation of compute (which wouldn’t be surprising given that it’s bitcoin but still)

p4bl0 2y ago
I had the same reaction. Isn't Bitcoin wasting enough energy as it is?
- sammy2255 2y ago
  What if it’s 100% green energy? Is it a waste?
  - jgalt212 2y ago
    It's all one energy market however. It's a bit a of rough approximation, but green energy wasted on unnecessary purposes is green energy not used for necessary things.
  - dodoisdodo 2y ago
    You still have to pay infrastructure deprecation costs, financing costs and labor costs.
  - monkeyfun 2y ago
    There may not be a continuous fuel expenditure, but there is a maintenance cost for the grid infrastructure, keeping panels or turbines in good working condition, etc. -- not to mention the manufacturing costs and, since no organizations are currently engaged in microwave power transmission from solar-power satellites in space -- not insignificant associated monetary and opportunity costs to the land used. Conclusion: yes, it's still a waste, unless that energy was surplus absolutely not going to be used for anything better or able to be stored, although even then the compute resources could have probably been used for more useful problems.
  - LadyCailin 2y ago

gosub100 2y ago

somewhat-related: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/RSA_Factoring_Challenge https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/RSA_Factoring_Challenge

cj 2y ago

Interesting: Reading the first page of the bitcointalk forum, the puzzle originated from this wallet, which has an incredible amount of volume going through it. 10,000+ transactions and over a million BTC sent/received. https://www.blockchain.com/explorer/addresses/btc/173ujrhEVGqaZvPHXLqwXiSmPVMo225cqT https://www.blockchain.com/explorer/addresses/btc/173ujrhEVG...

AureliusMA 2y ago
Probably an exchange wallet ?
- Jerrrrrrry 2y ago
  bug bounty wallet by a consensus of the anointed

ivanjermakov 2y ago

Who is paying to the puzzle solvers?

horacemorace 2y ago
Everyone who trades fiat for crypto.
doctorwhat 2y ago
Three letters agencies? Could be a nice way to find out if a foreign entity has an enormous brute-force capability? But more likely I'd say they got their bitcoin back when a core2duo was enough to generate a few of them overnight...
- cmcaleer 2y ago
  Prize pool would have to be much more than $400k to justify a state actor flexing that kind of capability, NK makes far more than that exploiting DeFi protocols.
PcChip 2y ago
The btc has been in the wallet since the puzzle was created
lm28469 2y ago
The person who created the wallets in 2015 when BTC wasn't worth much

Dwedit 2y ago

Do they have a buyer for that $400k? If not, it's not worth $400K.

Powdering7082 2y ago
24h Volume: $9,800,480,342 Liquidity of less than a million worth of BTC hasn't been a problem for a long time
somebodythere 2y ago
The market is liquid enough to absorb a sale for $400K.
- btcpuzzle888 2y ago
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thfuran 2y ago
Bitcoin is more than liquid enough to offload a half dozen without issue.
FileSorter 2y ago
One of the most profoundly dumb comments I have read here. It takes 3 seconds to look up the 24h volume for BTC and it is $9.6 Billion
- jakobov 2y ago
  Dont be mean
- latchkey 2y ago
  No matter how dumb it is, in general, it is always better to just respond with the answer and not comment on the comment itself. https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html "Be kind. Don't be snarky. Converse curiously; don't cross-examine. Edit out swipes."
- 2y ago

odyssey7 2y ago

What category of taxable income would this be in the US?

bornfreddy 2y ago
Asking for a friend?
- odyssey7 2y ago
  I wish.
greyface- 2y ago
1040 Schedule 1 Line 8(z) "Other income" IANAL, etc.
jncfhnb 2y ago
Losses due to theft

arcanemachiner 2y ago

Looks like the coins were stolen by a bot: > https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=1306983.msg64535839#msg64535839 https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=1306983.msg64535839#... I'm not super familiar with the concept (and I'm too lazy to look into it TBH), but I think the would-be winner posted the private key before enough (any?) blocks were mined, and the thief posted a transaction with a bigger fee, and the thief's transaction was in the block that got mined.

kneel 2y ago
That's not how bitcoin works
- ffsm8 2y ago
  Feel free to click on the link.
- dartos 2y ago
  That’s exactly how bitcoins works. As a miner, if I see two conflicting transactions I will prioritize the one which pays more rather than the one I saw first.
  - dheera 2y ago
    So can I avoid the attack by voluntarily paying a super high fee?
    - therein 2y ago
      Yeah unless the miner favors the other transaction for personal reasons.
    - baobabKoodaa 2y ago
      The attacker can see what fee you are offering, so they just offer higher
    - dartos 2y ago

thundergolfer 2y ago

We had fraudsters using modal.com compute to solve this challenge. It's not traditional mining software so it didn't initially get flagged, but we've updated our detection to catch it now[1]. 1. https://modal.com/blog/catching-cryptominers https://modal.com/blog/catching-cryptominers

ggrelet 2y ago
Just here to say I think modal is really cool. Keep up the good work!
mmsc 2y ago
Your blog 404s when an iPhone user uses lockdown mode. In fact your whole website fails to load.
buildbuildbuild 2y ago
Context: these users were not paying, were using stolen credit card numbers.
ficklepickle 2y ago
FYI something is wrong with your client side routing. From the blog post, clicking on your logo, the URL updates to the homepage but the content doesn't change til I do a full page reload.

iJohnDoe 2y ago

Can someone EILI5? I thought cracking anything to steal bitcoin was impossible due to the keys sizes involved? Is this possible because a portion of the key is already available so there is less to crack? Which key is known? The public or private? Another comment said the “now known public” but then also said the private key can now be recovered by cracking it? Two keys need to be cracked? What kind computing power is needed to crack both keys and how long? Thanks. Sorry, I’m an idiot when it comes to bitcoin.

CamperBob2 2y ago
As I understand it, they are basically private keys. The idea is to find the wallet address that they go with. Once that is done, the winner can create a transaction that sends the contents of the wallet to their own as a prize. This would normally be computationally intractable but these keys are much smaller than normal, with most of their leading digits intentionally zeroed out to make it easier to 'steal' the funds from the corresponding wallet. If anyone knows who set this up, or why, they aren't talking. In the process of creating the transaction to claim the prize, the winner must generate a corresponding public key based on some sort of hash of the private key and wallet address. I don't know how they can tell when they've succeeded; hopefully someone else can clarify/correct this point. But once they do succeed, the transaction is then posted in public to allow miners to add it to the blockchain. Unfortunately, due to mathematical witchfuckery, knowledge of both the private key and a valid public key makes it possible to solve the puzzle as if the already-shortened private key had half the number of bits. In that case, finding the wallet address might take only a minute or two on a standard GPU rather than the months of time on a whole warehouse full of them that the original winner had to spend. Knowing this, people who are bad and who should feel bad set up bots to watch for the prize-claiming transactions. The bots are designed to recompute the source wallet address independently and front-run the winner's transaction by resubmitting it for the benefit of the thief, using a higher reward to incentivize miners to prioritize their transaction over their original one. Bitcoin blocks are mined about every 20 minutes, so on average the thief has about 10 minutes to create an overriding transaction once the original transaction is posted. Sucks to be the winner who expended so much effort to claim the prize, as they are now out about $400K. Nothing left but a huge electric bill.

mrb 2y ago

Another good resource on these puzzles: https://privatekeys.pw/puzzles/bitcoin-puzzle-tx https://privatekeys.pw/puzzles/bitcoin-puzzle-tx

gzer0 2y ago

Whoever solved it left a rather intriguing, albeit slightly mocking, message: TX input: Code: 1FuckUmT5yBAvozf6gT8GRQVbJ7iBDUnrH TX outputs: Code: 1Jvv4yWkE9MhbuwGU66666666669sugEF 0.00000001 1YouAreSoDumbLoL666666666667K5aR4 0.00000002 1WhatWereUThinking6666666662wkqq1 0.00000003 1YouDeserveNothing6666666665sbbBC 0.00000004 1YouEpicFaiLure66666666666688GSDA 0.00000005 1BitchAssLoser66666666666669dBUVg 0.00000006 1AndEveryoneELse666666666669Vnc8C 0.00000007 1ThisisALosingGame6666666667HAZdf 0.00000008 1JustGetAReaLJob666666666665vGKVD 0.00000009 1YoureWastingTimeAndMoney664CVExC 0.00000010 1AndCausingCLimateChange6666HK8Qc 0.00000011 13zb1hQbWVsc2S7ZTZnP2G4undNNpdh5so 0.00000012 1Jvv4yWkE9MhbuwGUoqFYzDjRVQHaLWuJd 0.00000013 1FK5PjPNARQmg94n2cNHTo9417kWfXUDBQ 0.00002125

throwawayffffas 2y ago
It's not particularly intriguing, he is trash talking the competition.
- throwaway314155 2y ago
  that it's relatively self aware, in particular about energy consumption concerns, is mildly intriguing i think
  - fsckboy 2y ago
    the global warming consensus dominates the public discourse, the idea that somebody involved in crypto is not aware of energy consumption is a bit absurd
    - deleted 2y ago
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  - Quindecillion 2y ago
    What's wrong with energy consumption? I think you might be confusing it with greenhouse gas emissions.

wodenokoto 2y ago

That’s not a trivial price. Who finance these puzzles?

y42 2y ago
It's somewhere hidden in those million threads. The puzzle was created 10 years ago when Bitcoin was cheap.
- shoshino 2y ago
  > 2023-04-16: somebody (maybe the owner) increased the unsolved puzzles prizes again by x10. Now the puzzle #66 prize is 6.6 BTC, #67 is 6.7 BTC and so on... puzzle #160 prize is 16 BTC. https://www.blockchain.com/explorer/transactions/btc/12f34b58b04dfb0233ce889f674781c0e0c7ba95482cca469125af41a78d13b3 https://www.blockchain.com/explorer/transactions/btc/12f34b5... Bitcoin was not cheap in 2023, this is someone with $50m to spare!

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DreadPriateRob 2y ago

my assumption is the only way you will be able to stop any bot from double spend attack is to multisig the puzzle address when its solved so any transaction there forth would need your main wallets or any wallet that you set up to need its signature or signature(s) if using multiple before any transactions are made but you will need to be quick about it maybe even setting up your own script or bot to do so i find it wild that the solver didn't think that someone could swoop in and take the reward i multisig all my addresses for that very reason and yes i know a lot about mutisig it's impossible to use a double spend attack with that set up

patagnome 2y ago

ref: https://wiki.p2pfoundation.net/Arthur_Brock_Against_the_Consensus_on_Data_Consensus_in_the_Blockchain https://wiki.p2pfoundation.net/Arthur_Brock_Against_the_Cons...

Meganet 2y ago

So while this is going on https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Vl6VhCAeEfQ https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Vl6VhCAeEfQ (ted talk) a lot of people created co2 to take part in a btc lottery and the winner was now randomly found. I hate crypto :|

amjnsx 2y ago
It’s easy to put those two pieces of information together and arrive at crypto bad. I think it’s worth noting that bitcoin uses a fraction of the energy required to mine gold for example. It’s also a driving force in renewables, by stabilising energy grids (mining can use the spare capacity during quiet periods and switch off during peak hours). So I don’t think it’s as black and white as “bitcoin uses energy = bad”
- Meganet 2y ago
  Bitcoin doesn't stabilize the power grid. Its stupid greewashing. There is no motivation for a Bitcoin miner to leverage 'overenergy' the only motivation is to get cheap energy as much as possible. In NYC they bought a Gas power plant only for bitcoin. In Texas they had to pay millions to bitcoin miners for them to shut down. In china they stole power from normal people left and right. It also allows to sell local limited energy globally and pushing energy into the trading/gambling area. Instead of giving local people cheap energy, some bitcoin miner will try to get as much of that cheap energy possible. It also incentivives using bitcoin miners to use flare gas instead of doing something to actually capture and use it as it is a limited resource. Nonetheless PoW is stupid. its the worst scenario we can come up with in a society with scare resources and a very limited co2 budget by now ( have you watched the TED talk? ). And at the end bitcoins PoW system even still stand on our existing PoW system. Someone stole your bitcoins? You go to the police... Without our existing PoS System, you would need to keep your bitcoin wallet and address always anonyme otherwise you would trust our law and order (part of our PoS system) and you could literaly only send bitcoins around and nothing else. (Smart contracts are also not scalable and not stable solution to this issue). Btw. yes gold need energy to be mined but its a one time cost YOU HAVE TO DO to use this material. Bitcoin is a Waste Resource all the time to use. And Gold has real value in science, manufacturing and in styling/model/art. Nonetheless we need to get the co2 production of Gold down and Bitcoin we just don't need. The best solution is to get rid of bitcoin and keep reducing co2 production for gold. And yes i do have a lot more arguments on why bitcoin is useless.

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y42 2y ago

What I don't understand, hopefully someone is still reading it here: The hint says this: >> First output: take random number from 2^0 upto 2^1-1, use it as private key >> Second output: take random number from 2^1 upto 2^2-1, use it as private key >> Third output: take random number from 2^2 upto 2^3-1, use it as private key To me it sounds like that wallet #10 has a range from 2^9 to 2^10 - 1 - so you don't actually need to check previous bits. But somehow it seems like everyone is crawling through the whole range of possible private key. Doesn't make sense, does it? Am I missing something?

Dylan16807 2y ago
What do you mean by previous bits? Where are you seeing how "everyone is crawling"? With each puzzle, you know that the top bit is 1, and nothing else. Every bit below that is unknown, and you need to go through the whole range of n-1 bits. Puzzle #10 has 9 bits to guess, because it's between 10_0000_0000 and 11_1111_1111. Puzzle #66 has 65 bits to guess. If someone says 66 unknown bits they've misspoken.
- y42 2y ago
  yeah, thats what i meant, just to make clear "how" I am thinking it: It's just iterating through integers from n to k and calculating secp256k1, sha-256 and ripemd. So: >> Puzzle #10 has 9 bits to guess, because it's between 10_0000_0000 and 11_1111_1111 means that I don't have to start at 0000 0000 0000 ... everytime, I can actually start at 2^5 and look up to 2^6 - 1, for example for the 6th address.
  - Dylan16807 2y ago
    But show me someone that's starting at zero? You said it "seems like everyone" is doing that. Where?

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