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Bitcoin puzzle #66 was solved: 6.6 BTC (~$400k) withdrawn

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Re: Bitcoin puzzle #66 was solved: 6.6 BTC (~$400k) withdrawn

#121

Post by stonegray »

altairprime wrote: post #21
rboyd wrote: post #9

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

By what means might you prove or disprove this theory?

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.

Re: Bitcoin puzzle #66 was solved: 6.6 BTC (~$400k) withdrawn

#122

Post by mistrial9 »

red_admiral wrote: post #108
aeonik wrote: post #103

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

It's some kind of EC/DSA scheme, isn't it? Then from the private key you can indeed get the public key.

Is this true? from an ECDSA private key you could derive many possible public keys? asking for a friend

Re: Bitcoin puzzle #66 was solved: 6.6 BTC (~$400k) withdrawn

#123

Post by CamperBob2 »

n2d4 wrote: post #27
mrb wrote: post #2

Discussion thread here: 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 ze…

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_...

These keys are based on elliptic curves rather than products of primes, aren't they?

Re: Bitcoin puzzle #66 was solved: 6.6 BTC (~$400k) withdrawn

#124

Post by thinkmassive »

Byxxi wrote: post #78
throwawaymaths wrote: post #52

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What if you're using that energy in your hot tub, or to heat your house during the winter?

Are you arguing staying alive through winter as something less beneficial to bitcoin mining?

If electricity is being used to generate heat (for a house, hot tub, etc), and that heat happens to be generated by a bitcoin miner, is it more or less wasteful than only using the electricity to generate heat?

Re: Bitcoin puzzle #66 was solved: 6.6 BTC (~$400k) withdrawn

#125

Post by matthewdgreen »

CamperBob2 wrote: post #123
n2d4 wrote: post #27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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_...

These keys are based on elliptic curves rather than products of primes, aren't they?

There is one rho algorithm for discrete logarithms and one for factoring. Published three years apart.

Re: Bitcoin puzzle #66 was solved: 6.6 BTC (~$400k) withdrawn

#126

Post by aeonik »

mistrial9 wrote: post #122
red_admiral wrote: post #108

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's some kind of EC/DSA scheme, isn't it? Then from the private key you can indeed get the public key.

Is this true? from an ECDSA private key you could derive many possible public keys? asking for a friend

I looked it up.

1. SHA-256: Used twice (double SHA-256) for block hashing and once in address generation.

2. RIPEMD-160: Used once in address generation (after SHA-256).

3. ECDSA: Used once for transaction signing and verification.

4. Base58Check: Used once for address encoding (includes a checksum generated using SHA-256).

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

#127

Post by ggrelet »

thundergolfer wrote: post #106

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

Just here to say I think modal is really cool. Keep up the good work!

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

#128

Post by beepbooptheory »

oniony wrote: post #119
mapt wrote: post #74

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If you want to prove that somebody has the ability to pick locks in order to protect your valuables, you leave the prize sitting on the kitchen table (at 66 bits of entropy) behind your relatively easy front door lock, not in a secure vault with triple redundant mechanisms. Somebody with the solution is going to be able to claim the money in far, far less computing time than they could claim a larger prize by breakin…

Except your analogy doesn't work because every single bitcoin address has the same brand of lock.

Each key is a brand in the analogy.

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

#129

Post by BenjiWiebe »

thinkmassive wrote: post #124
Byxxi wrote: post #78

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Are you arguing staying alive through winter as something less beneficial to bitcoin mining?

If electricity is being used to generate heat (for a house, hot tub, etc), and that heat happens to be generated by a bitcoin miner, is it more or less wasteful than only using the electricity to generate heat?

That's fine, provided you weren't going to heat it with a heat pump before you decided to use a Bitcoin miner. I suppose there's also a slight environmental cost in producing a Bitcoin miner vs producing a heating coil but I'm going to assume that's negligible.

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

#130

Post by Scoundreller »

Powdering7082 wrote: post #86
sigmoid10 wrote: post #82

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>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.

> 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-bute…

Is this basically saying he sent all the ETH out of his "account" (presumably to another one that was pre-generated & pre-shared half the private key with his family), so that it just had the Shiba tokens left in it?

Then he didn't have to worry about the Shiba related transactions affecting his ETH?

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