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Bitcoin puzzle #66 was solved: 6.6 BTC (~$400k) withdrawn

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351–360 of 428 posts

Re: Bitcoin puzzle #66 was solved: 6.6 BTC (~$400k) withdrawn

#351

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It would crash before you could sell it. Guarantee major market makers are watching these wallets specifically, and autonomously.

So if someone figures out how to do it, they then effectively have a button that destroys a massive amount of wealth worldwide owned by a pretty specific group of people? That's fascinating, with billions of dollars at stake people would absolutely kill for that, not to mention the governments that use crypto on a macro scale for avoiding sanctions etc. Would probably make a really good thriller.

My theory: The wealth would probably effectively transfer to holders of other currencies. You aren’t really destroying wealth by destroying currency; the supply of stuff is still available. Just now the demand for it from crypto-holders is gone, so it’d get cheaper for USD-holders.

Re: Bitcoin puzzle #66 was solved: 6.6 BTC (~$400k) withdrawn

#352
post #337
post #336

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Presumably there is a generator function that maps key IDs into actual keys that can be re-computed at will.

How could this work with less than 1 bit of data per key? Assuming there are no duplicates, which is a sensible assumption, you’d need a minimum of 100,000,000 bits to store 100,000,000 unique entries larger than 1 bit with even a perfect hash function.

Maybe storing ranges or similar

Re: Bitcoin puzzle #66 was solved: 6.6 BTC (~$400k) withdrawn

#353
post #164
post #153

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Private mempool transaction

I’m a relatively smart person, probably above average, but glad bitcoin hasn’t taken over banking because I don’t understand any of this.

Yes, no such thing as dark pools in traditional finance /s

Re: Bitcoin puzzle #66 was solved: 6.6 BTC (~$400k) withdrawn

#354
post #321

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No knowing the public key reduces the number of keys you have to attempt to find the corresponding private key. If it required the same number of attempts they would have just found it first without having to wait for the broadcast to snipe it. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pollard%27s_rho_algorithm_for_...

Wait Pollard rho runtime is based on the order of the group not the size of the private key. Maybe there's more to it? This strikes me as more of a hidden number problem. But to make it work you need to observe something using that small number. A transaction might have been enough.

The exact details are beyond me but knowing the public key cuts the required private keys you need to test in half. Public keys are included in the transaction but normal keys have enough bits they're effectively protected even with their raw entropy cut in half. 128 bits are still more than you can effectively brute force but the 33 bits left for this challenge is far easier which let the attacker snipe the reward by exploiting the low fee offered on the original solve message sent to the transaction pool.

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

#355
post #349

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Quite well, thank you! Coming up on nine years without hacks, and apparently quantum-resistant. The next release of Nano (the original and best imo*) manages spam to the point where fee-less sub-second transactions can be maintained even while under a directed spam attack. If you want to learn more there's plenty of documentation: Overview: https://docs.nano.org/what-is-nano/overview/ More technical docs: https://doc…

imo nano had it's time in the limelight to shine and has just slowly died out. The Raiblocks and BitGrail hack sealed it's death.

Raiblocks was never hacked, an exchange was (though it could have been an inside job, and BitGrail was at the very least negligent). Very different, though yes, still damaging.

And this isn't about personal beliefs, market cap, market share, etc. The conversational point was that it's technically vastly superior to BTC, which it undeniably is. On market cap, adoption and hype, BTC wins hands down, for now, but there's no reason at all for that to always be the case.

People here love dunking on cryptocurrency for the slow times and the mining and the hacks (like this post) - yet none of that is a necessary characteristic of cryptocurrency.

Btw, Nano is very much alive. V27 is coming out soon making major improvements, regardless of like, your opinion man.

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

#356
post #317

Earlier quoted context omitted.

People said the same thing about renewable energy for decades ... "It's so niche! How could it ever replace fossil fuel?". The point stands - BTC's limitations mean nothing to the potential of digital currency as a whole. Cryptocurrency has been proven not to need fees or mining, and yet people love to attack it on that basis. Anything to feel superior I guess.

It’s not about superiority, it’s about the pie in the sky claims made by crypto, none of which have demonstrably helped real world use cases at any scale. Even taking your example coin, they’re making it production-grade, for what? How many people seriously use it? What is the real plan to adoption? Or is it just another fun tech project.

Each transaction uses a tenth the energy of a credit card, confirmed in milliseconds. It's decentralized. It's secure. Isn't controlled by a shadowy entity working to hoard wealth and power backed up by military threat. Etc.

Why am I doing basic research for you?

These aren't "pie in the sky" "claims", they are statements of fact that can be verified by trying it out yourself. I already linked the docs if you want to know how it works, what the upcoming milestones are, what work has already been done, etc.

One example of a great use case is Nano-gpt(.com), where you can try the latest AI models straight away and pay by the question. The bottleneck here is your imagination.

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

#357

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Coin ignorant here: Why would it not be worth anything?

All transactions are publicly visible, so everyone would know that it was now possible for someone to take bitcoins from people. Value depends on resale. Why would anyone ever buy a bitcoin or accept payment with them if they can just disappear at any time?

If that's the problem, you just say "this person had lax security" or "their computer was compromised." In the absence of real proof that will be the default expectation anyway.

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

#358
post #212
post #114

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That’s exactly how bitcoins works. As a miner, if I see two conflicting transactions I will prioritize the one which pays more rather than the one I saw first.

So can I avoid the attack by voluntarily paying a super high fee?

Assuming it’s higher than the bot can post, yes.

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

#360
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?

There's no where that is oversaturated with renewables 24/7 and these kind of workloads aren't scaling up and down to just use renewable excess so it's a moot question. Except in the very peak of solar generation when there's a grid excess every watt spent on BTC or any other PoW chain is wasted. They're all speculative toys.
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