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Bitcoin puzzle #66 was solved: 6.6 BTC (~$400k) withdrawn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Re: Bitcoin puzzle #66 was solved: 6.6 BTC (~$400k) withdrawn

#291

Post by burkaman »

sammy2255 wrote: post #41
p4bl0 wrote: post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I had the same reaction. Isn't Bitcoin wasting enough energy as it is?

What if it’s 100% green energy? Is it a waste?

Yes.

https://cowboystatedaily.com/2024/09/03/giant-wyoming-carbon...

> CarbonCapture cited “intense competition from data centers” in the region for electricity as partially the reason why it is moving from Wyoming.

Wyoming is a very popular state for cryptocurrency mining due to substantial state support, cheap energy, cool climate, etc. Miners use a lot of clean energy that would have been used for more useful purposes, as shown by the article I linked.

Re: Bitcoin puzzle #66 was solved: 6.6 BTC (~$400k) withdrawn

#293

Post by alex_duf »

TrapLord_Rhodo wrote: post #290
mapt wrote: post #32

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

That's all bitcoin is... If someone had a quantum-supreme solution they would go after the sitoshi wallets. Some addresses have like $1B+ and combined represent ~$200B.

But touch that $1B+ wallet and suddenly nothing is worth anything... so if I had the capability to silently steal money from the bitcoin blockchain, I would go slow, and in discrete places.

Re: Bitcoin puzzle #66 was solved: 6.6 BTC (~$400k) withdrawn

#294

Post by amjnsx »

Meganet wrote: post #292

So while this is going on 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 :|

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”

Re: Bitcoin puzzle #66 was solved: 6.6 BTC (~$400k) withdrawn

#295

Post by TrapLord_Rhodo »

exhilaration wrote: post #208
gzer0 wrote: post #194

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 1An…

Was this left by the person who solved it or the one who stole the prize? See below: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=41549946

This is a signed transaction. So the one who stole the prize.

One of the really interesting thing about the blockchain, is that you can write a smart contract script that will permiate forever.

using a hashed transaction instead of a signed transaction is a wierd mistake to make, but not an uncommon one of people who are just learning to write blockchain code. I know we are talking about BTC here and opcode is rather limited, but this type of thing pervades on ETH.

Imagine writing a PWN script as a 14 year old and waking up when you are in your late 20's to a millions dollars in crypto.

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

#296

Post by evilfred »

EGreg wrote: post #268
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…

I recommend to everyone to take their 12 words, write em 3 times on a piece of paper, cut it into 9 pieces and hide them in places only you’d know

or just use a more user friendly and accessible currency and banking system

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

#297

Post by jamalaramala »

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…

Let me see if I understand it.

If someone knows that a given address has a huge sum of money, they can create a bot to monitor that particular address, overriding any transactions to his own address?

Would that be possible???

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

#298

Post by keepamovin »

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…

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, 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.

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

#299

Post by kobalsky »

LegionMammal978 wrote: post #89
kobalsky wrote: post #40

Earlier quoted context omitted.

controlled arms race to improve things on both sides and it doubles as a canary.

If someone had totally broken the hash in secret, I doubt they'd burn it on such a low-stakes canary.

the canary is there for a gas leak, not for an asteroid destroying the earth.

the canaries that are left are worth several million of USD combined, if there's any incremental progress towards cracking them, that's a strong incentive not to leave the money on the table.

if someone comes up with a full crack sponteously, then yeah the canaries won't protect you, or anything else for that matter.

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

#300

Post by KMnO4 »

jamalaramala wrote: post #297
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…

Let me see if I understand it. If someone knows that a given address has a huge sum of money, they can create a bot to monitor that particular address, overriding any transactions to his own address? Would that be possible???

If you have the private key you can send money as you see fit.

The purpose of the puzzle is to find the private key given only 75% of it.

Let’s imagine that takes 1 year to brute force the last 25%. But if you have the public key as well, it only takes 1 minute.

As soon as the coins were sent, the private key was known since it inherently revealed the public key.

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