The world of cryptocurrencies is full of surprises, and one of them is the so-called “Bitcoin Puzzle”. This mysterious puzzle began in 2015, when someone created 256 Bitcoin wallets and sent funds to them, which are yours if you find the key. But for what purpose?
The Creation of the Bitcoin Puzzle
Well, the answer is simple: for fun, to make money, and to demonstrate how secure Bitcoin private keys are. Your seed phrase generates a 256-bit private key, a sequence of 256 zeros and ones.
Guessing a particular private key would be equivalent to to win the lottery nine times in a row. Needless to say, this is an extremely difficult task.
The Bitcoin Puzzle mystery dates back to January 2015, when the initial transaction was created, containing transfers to 256 different Bitcoin addresses. The puzzles have thickened over the years, with movements of funds between these addresses in July 2017, thus increasing the amounts at stake and reducing the total number of keys has “only” 160.
In May 2019, the creator of the “puzzles” added a layer of complexity by performing outbound transactions worth 1000 satoshis to some of the addresses, perhaps to gauge the difficulty of finding a private key for addresses that have already had transactions versus those that have not.
Then, in April 2023, a new plot was woven when someone, perhaps the owner, multiplied the rewards by 10 unsolved puzzles.
From now on, the price of Puzzle #66 is 6.6 BTC, #67 is 6.7 BTCand so on, reaching an impressive 16 BTC for Puzzle #160.
This saga continues to captivate the attention of the crypto community, offering those who embark on this adventure a chance to land a exceptional award by solving these mysterious puzzles.
How to solve the Bitcoin Puzzle?
So how can we solve this mysterious Bitcoin puzzle? Each private key was generated with a series of leading zeros, meaning that you just have to “guess” the remaining bits. The first puzzle was relatively simple, requiring only single-bit guessingwith a key starting with:
00000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000001.
However, make no mistake, things get complicated quickly. Each subsequent private key has one more bit, and the first 65 have already been solved. However, the most attractive is the Puzzle #160which offers the tidy sum of 16 BTC as a reward, but requires guessing 160 bits.
Methods and probabilities
The question that naturally arises is: how to solve this puzzle and what is the probability of success? The most efficient method is to use a graphics processing unit (GPU). For example, an RTX3080 can resolve 1.6 billion keys per second using for example CuBitCrack, an open source project written in Python.
But before embarking on this adventure, it is essential to understand the scale of the task:
It exists 36,893,488,147,419,103,231 potential keysand if we divide this number by 1,600,000,000 keys per second, it would take approximately 2.3*10^10 seconds, or 731 years, to guess them all.
For fans of big numbersso there are thirty-six quintillion, eight hundred and ninety-three quadrillion, four hundred and eighty-eight trillion, one hundred and forty-seven billion, four hundred and nineteen million, one hundred and three thousand, two hundred and thirty-one possibilities…
To guess 1% of these keys, it would be necessary 2,668 days and consumption of approximately 19,215 kWh of electricity, a cost of approximately 4,227.3 euros with a rate of 22 cents per kWh (Average price in France in 2023).
In comparison, the 16 BTC is currently worth 516,992 dollars. This means that you would have a 1% chance of winning them by spending 4,227.3 €it’s up to you to see if the game is worth it…
Fun learning
Ultimately, the Bitcoin Puzzle is primarily a fun way to learn about Bitcoin private keys and open source software written in Python. Ultimately with automation, the chances of success are a little better than those of the traditional lottery, and the potential value is also interesting.
So why not take a chance and solve this mysterious cryptographic puzzle? There are entire communities determined to solve the puzzle. Who knows, maybe you will be the next winner of 16 BTC?
The official puzzle website: Bitcoin Puzzle