310 Bitcoin challenge has been solved

by kwikiel on 10/11/2018, 10:47 PM with 119 comments
  • by modeless on 10/12/2018, 12:26 AM

    I like how bitcoin enables people to set up puzzle bounties like this. Looks like there's a subreddit for it: https://www.reddit.com/r/bitcoinpuzzles/

    I might monitor that sub for more bounties, I had no idea there was one this large floating around.

  • by zawerf on 10/12/2018, 12:03 AM

    Is there a discussion thread somewhere?

    There are 18 three digit hexadecimals in the puzzle. If the answer is a permutation of these, then that's just 18 factorial which is 6.4 * 10^15. That is totally bruteforcable without even thinking about the puzzle (and totally worth spinning up a cluster for).

    I don't know anything about bitcoin though and 54 characters seems too short to be a private key? You can also brute force 10 more interspersed characters for a slowdown factor of 16^10 * (64 choose 10) = 9.9 * 10^15. So then it's a total cost of 6.3*10^31. Still bruteforceable but more expensive if you're wrong about it.

  • by walrus01 on 10/11/2018, 11:47 PM

    At today's rate that is about $1.89 million of btc. Why would someone give away nearly $2m of btc as a publicity stunt?

  • by quickthrower2 on 10/12/2018, 4:33 AM

    Worth more than a pre-shredded Banksy, and looks better too!

  • by savethefuture on 10/11/2018, 11:04 PM

    Well that didn't last long. I see the btc has been drained but who solved it, and where is the solution, will there be one?

  • by ttoinou on 10/12/2018, 10:53 AM

    They should do this when a new Project Euler problems comes out :)

    https://projecteuler.net/recent

  • by nathan_f77 on 10/12/2018, 9:23 AM

    Wow, that's a huge prize. And that puzzle was insanely difficult, I'm very impressed that someone was able to solve it.

    I had a lot of fun making a Bitcoin "treasure hunt" last year [1], and I'm going to do another one in the next few months. I think this time it will be more of a coding challenge than a puzzle. And I'm only giving away $500, not $2M! But if that sounds fun, you can sign up for the mailing list at the bottom. I'll also be posting it on https://www.reddit.com/r/bitcoinpuzzles/

    [1] https://formapi.io/blog/posts/bitcoin-treasure-hunt/

  • by colemannugent on 10/11/2018, 11:48 PM

    I love these kinds of puzzles. Can't wait for the write-up of the solution.

  • by on 10/12/2018, 4:55 AM

    undefined

  • by mikorym on 10/12/2018, 6:05 AM

    Does anyone know how long this puzzle had been up?

  • by hailey2345 on 10/12/2018, 12:22 AM

    WHO ARE WE? We are a team of professional hackers from all over the world, who evolved from the shadows of dark web, a subset of deep web with hidden services, our main motive is to provide you safe and secure professional hacking services : contact our agent/officer on DARKWEBOFF1@GMAIL.COM for any of the services listed below or more Instagram hacking Whatsapp Twitter Facebook Hotmail Rediff mail Yandex mail Pinterest Bloggerhacking Youtube channel hacking Wordpress hacking Skype Software Penetration test Database dumping Credit fraud recovering Windows hacking Paypal hacking Western union Car hacking and unlocking Wifi password cracking Credit score fix Cryptocurrency theft DDOS attacking Ethical hacking learning Doxing Whatsapp hacking CCTV hacking iphone and icloud hacking Phone hacking and tracing Gaming and betting site hacking School grade upgrading >>>> You can contact us for other services not listed here.

    contact on DARKWEBOFF1@GMAIL.COM

  • by nimmen on 10/11/2018, 11:57 PM

    To take this idea further... Wonder if it would be possible to click/mine-bait to alternative "branch" consensus :)

  • by vladislav on 10/12/2018, 12:43 AM

    One can think of many better ways to harness human intelligence than work on an arbitrary puzzle... unless this is an interview for something much bigger.