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Bitcoin puzzle #66 was solved: 6.6 BTC (~$400k) withdrawn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Re: Bitcoin puzzle #66 was solved: 6.6 BTC (~$400k) withdrawn

#171

Post by misnome »

Jach wrote: post #151
nephanth wrote: post #68

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes? If the energy could be used for something productive, but is instead used for something unproductive, then it is a waste While that energy technically serves the purpose of letting a monetary system function, traditional monetary infrastructure requires vastly smaller amounts of energy, thus this is a wasteful use of it

Last time I did some numbers, bank of america spent around $1bn per year in cybersecurity alone, and bitcoin mining energy cost about 10x that. For ensuring the security of a trustless worldwide monetary system, it's not that bad in comparison.

… unless your trustless worldwide monetary system wants to process more than seven transactions per second.

I guess BoA probably handles a little more than that?

Re: Bitcoin puzzle #66 was solved: 6.6 BTC (~$400k) withdrawn

#172

Post by hanniabu »

mrb wrote: post #136
arcanemachiner wrote: post #90

Looks like the coins were stolen by a bot: > 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.

No private key was posted too early. What happened is the person who spent all the computing power to brute force the 66 bits broadcasted, naively, a transaction to send the 6.6 BTC reward to his wallet. However, when doing so, the public key is by design revealed on the blockchain. Someone's bot whose sole purpose is to steal this puzzles rewards was monitoring the blockchain and spotted the transaction before it go…

> processed the now known public key from which the private key can be recovered in 2^33 operations (2^(n/2))

So anybody that has sent a transaction can have their private key cracked just from their public address? How is this considered secure? That's absurd...

Re: Bitcoin puzzle #66 was solved: 6.6 BTC (~$400k) withdrawn

#173

Post by mrb »

hanniabu wrote: post #172
mrb wrote: post #136

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No private key was posted too early. What happened is the person who spent all the computing power to brute force the 66 bits broadcasted, naively, a transaction to send the 6.6 BTC reward to his wallet. However, when doing so, the public key is by design revealed on the blockchain. Someone's bot whose sole purpose is to steal this puzzles rewards was monitoring the blockchain and spotted the transaction before it go…

> processed the now known public key from which the private key can be recovered in 2^33 operations (2^(n/2)) So anybody that has sent a transaction can have their private key cracked just from their public address? How is this considered secure? That's absurd...

Normal keys can't be cracked as they use 256-bit public keys providing 128-bit security, which is still secure.

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

#174

Post by wkat4242 »

hanniabu wrote: post #172
mrb wrote: post #136

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No private key was posted too early. What happened is the person who spent all the computing power to brute force the 66 bits broadcasted, naively, a transaction to send the 6.6 BTC reward to his wallet. However, when doing so, the public key is by design revealed on the blockchain. Someone's bot whose sole purpose is to steal this puzzles rewards was monitoring the blockchain and spotted the transaction before it go…

> processed the now known public key from which the private key can be recovered in 2^33 operations (2^(n/2)) So anybody that has sent a transaction can have their private key cracked just from their public address? How is this considered secure? That's absurd...

Well this isn't a normal key. It's a key with extremely reduced entropy for the sake of the puzzle. Most of the private key is already known and is in fact all zero.

So this would not be possible with a normal Bitcoin transaction with regular entropy.

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

#175

Post by sowbug »

CaptainOfCoit wrote: post #54
School-Cotton wrote: post #36

Earlier quoted context omitted.

1. Create Coinbase account 2. Deposit bitcoin 3. Market order sell all 4. Withdraw USD

Step 2.5 Argue with Coinbase about if you're a legitimate owner or not Step 2.6 Coinbase blocks your account citing "Suspicious activity" Step 2.7 Sign up to three other exchanges, split the loot across them Step 5 Argue with the bank about the source of funds Step 6 Argue with tax agency that you'll fill out your taxes correctly

Still better than depositing $400K of cash in a US bank.

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

#176

Post by cmcaleer »

CaptainOfCoit wrote: post #54
School-Cotton wrote: post #36

Earlier quoted context omitted.

1. Create Coinbase account 2. Deposit bitcoin 3. Market order sell all 4. Withdraw USD

Step 2.5 Argue with Coinbase about if you're a legitimate owner or not Step 2.6 Coinbase blocks your account citing "Suspicious activity" Step 2.7 Sign up to three other exchanges, split the loot across them Step 5 Argue with the bank about the source of funds Step 6 Argue with tax agency that you'll fill out your taxes correctly

If you have all of your ducks in a row this is actually much easier than it sounds.

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

#177

Post by idiotsecant »

LikesPwsh wrote: post #94
Powdering7082 wrote: post #86

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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…

Vitalik got indirectly pwned by the infamous DAO smart contract hack, but had the social clout to pause/rollback the supposedly decentralised/immutable Blockchain. Maybe not the best example of cryptographic security.

Vitalik didn't rollback the chain. The entire community agreed that it was the correct thing to do and did it. Thats how consensus mechanisims work. This was easier then because the community was tiny. It would be impossible now.

The proof of this is that some people didn't agree with undoing that transaction. They stayed on the old chain, which is now worthless.

This is such a boring and widely known story now, but it has to come up literally any time someone wants to play crypto tribalisim.

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

#178

Post by Dibby053 »

mrb wrote: post #163
Dibby053 wrote: post #155

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That must hurt. In case I crack the next puzzle... how should I go about collecting the prize without having to mine a block myself or trust a miner not to screw me over?

To avoid this risk: either you solo mine your transaction, or you submit your transaction to a mining pool that will not broadcast it to the P2P network until it is mined. Some pools offer this as a service (eg. https://slipstream.mara.com/ ). This is kludgey but this is because the puzzle is inherently limited by its technical design. Note that this issue doesn't exist with puzzle numbers that are multiple of 5, bec…

I didn't know there was a formal service for it, that's very cool. Still, it relies on the miner keeping its word instead of cracking the private key. In practice it would definitely not bother risking its reputation like that, but I wonder if there's way around it, with smart contracts or something.

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

#179

Post by rkagerer »

mrb wrote: post #136
arcanemachiner wrote: post #90

Looks like the coins were stolen by a bot: > 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.

No private key was posted too early. What happened is the person who spent all the computing power to brute force the 66 bits broadcasted, naively, a transaction to send the 6.6 BTC reward to his wallet. However, when doing so, the public key is by design revealed on the blockchain. Someone's bot whose sole purpose is to steal this puzzles rewards was monitoring the blockchain and spotted the transaction before it go…

How would said bot have recognized this transaction was one of these puzzles, and thus worth brute-forcing?

Given only a random public key, is it possible to quickly recognize when its corresponding private key has weak entropy?

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

#180

Post by drexlspivey »

thrtythreeforty wrote: post #170
drexlspivey wrote: post #165

Earlier quoted context omitted.

https://slipstream.mara.com/

Aren't you effectively trusting that service not to front run you?

Yes, the only other way is to mine it yourself. They are a public company that run their own miners if it makes you feel any better.
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