>Can't I check the blockchain for all transactions around the time that the informant sent the bounty and just brute-force that Do check in from your private i

>Can't I check the blockchain for all transactions around the time that the informant sent the bounty and just brute-force that Do check in from your private island after you finish doing so, since the next transaction on the blockchain you will brute force is presumably this one: http://www.coindesk.com/194993-btc-transaction-147m-mystery-and-speculation/ http://www.coindesk.com/194993-btc-transaction-147m-mystery-... Being more serious, it should be emphasized that you're not by any means brute forcing Bitcoin transactions when you're doing this. He's just using a clever technique composed of crypto hash chains to hide a Bitcoin private key. It just happens to use the same SHA256 algo as Bitcoin mining does.