Username: HCP123

Pretty slick looking site you have there!

Hi Seuntjie,

Just curious about how the "Stats" thing works and how the "time" is being calculated... I reset everything about an hour or so ago... but now it says time running is over 14 hours??!? 



So the Profit per hour and profit per 24 hours are being calculated all weird...

Otherwise, the bot is chugging along nicely... thanks for all the hard work! 

Crypto-Games Nickname: HCP123

Crypto-Games Nickname: HCP123

Well... maybe they're not THAT safe (if we get clues )...

So at around 1509 hrs UTC on 28th September (around 0409 hrs on the 29th local)... my script spat out another possible hit... I was working a night shift and so I didn't actually get around to checking it until around 8 hours later.

Amongst the 3 new possible hits that had been generated, one started with "1qk...."... could this be it?? I quickly checked on blockchain.info... "Final Balance: 0.5001 BTC"... WOOOOHOOOO!!!!!!!   So I quickly imported the private key into my wallet and transferred my newfound loot into my own personal address.

The private key turned out to be: 5JKPapJwgyEij3sxYRAEnixyiFgxqkVhgZXv9bWWknBexegx6tM

• 5 - 1_3_5
• J - Steve Jobs
• K - Kevlar
• P - Pi
• a - Atari
• p - parachute
• J - Jet
• w - wing
• g - Johannes Gutenberg
• y - yoyo
• E - mc^2 = E
• i - iron #lowercase BLUE
• j - jigsaw
• 3 - 1836 Morse Code Invented
• s - scissors
• x - x-ray #lowercase BLUE
• Y - Linus Yale #UPPERCASE lightGreen
• R - radar
• A - Aspirin #UPPERCASE lightGreen
• E - Eiffel Tower
• n - Nobel
• i - ice skate #lowercase BLUE
• x - XX chromosome
• y - XY chromosome
• i - igloo #lowercase BLUE
• F - film
• g - Galileo
• x - Xerox
• q - Question
• k - Nakamoto #lowercase BLUE
• V - vaporiser #UPPERCASE lightGreen
• h - Satoshi
• g - Gramophone
• Z - zipper #UPPERCASE lightGreen
• X - alphabet X
• v - viagra #lowercase BLUE
• 9 - Euro - 1996
• b - Braile for B
• W - WiFi #UPPERCASE lightGreen
• W - Windows
• k - krypton (periodic table) #lowercase BLUE
• n - DNA #lowercase BLUE
• B - balloon #UPPERCASE lightGreen
• e - Einstein
• x - 2009 MMIX #lowercase BLUE
• e - Etch a Sketch
• g - Gameboy
• x - Xeon (periodic table) #lowercase BLUE
• 6 - 1962 LED invention date
• t - Tesla
• M - Mouse

For this second big run, I decided to make some assumptions on upper/lowercase based on tile colour... the first clue being the "i" characters. Due to the Base58 alphabet only having lowercase i, and the 2 "i" clues that I was fairly confident on (iron and igloo) both being blue tiles, I decided to try making all the blue tiles lowercase. The 2nd character is always an uppercase in a WIF address. It was light green, so I decided to set all the lightgreen tiles to uppercase. For all the other tile colours, I was including both the lower and uppercase for my best guess at what the character was which increased the keyspace quite considerably.

However, setting the blues and light greens to a single case helped cut the final keyspace I was searching down to "only" 8,589,934,592 key combinations, which at 25,000/s would take around 90ish hours (just under 4 days) to complete.

Analysis after finding the key shows that in addition to my (thankfully correct) assumptions on upper/lower case, that black tiles were all uppercase, while the red and darker green tiles were all lowercase.

In the end, the script only got through just over 1,103,000,000 keys (in just under 12 hours) before I got lucky:


I sent a note to the puzzle creator to let them know...  and I have created a PasteBin with my source code in case anyone wants to see my pretty ugly and untidy python code

well... that's a little disappointing...


Found 3 valid private keys out of 9,663,676,416 combinations... and none of them were the right one (or had any BTCs ) So, obviously, some of my assumptions were wrong 

We really need to solve the mystery of whether or not there is any way to determine upper or lowercase based on the information we have... I have not been able to discern any pattern as yet...

So after nearly 20 hours...


Almost 1.9 billion keys searched... so the average still seems to be around 1mil per 35-40 seconds... even with me doing other things on the machine and playing Overwatch etc... I guess that isn't toooo surprising given that it should be running single threaded... and I'm on a 4 core machine...

Maybe I could force multiple copies of the script to run on different cores... and have the keyspace divided amongst the copies... I could check them faster?

Ok... so I've done some rewriting... and am actually now just doing the WIF checksum checking... ie.

• 1. convert WIF to Byte Array
• 2. drop last 4 checksum bytes from 1.
• 3. SHA256 hash result from 2.
• 4. SHA256 hash result from 3.
• 5. First 4 bytes from 4. is calculated checksum
• 6. Compare with Last 4 bytes from 1.
• If checksums are the same, then we're good and have a 'valid' WIF private key (not necessarily the winning WIF), else ignore that WIF

I used this site as a way to generate some test WIFs and to get it straight in my head the correct steps needed to make sure the checksum was good. I am fairly confident (around 99.9%) that if my script generates a valid WIF private key, it will output it for me to check against the public address.


As for speed... I've set it up to output a datetime every 1,000,000 addresses... it seems to be doing this about every 40 seconds... which is around 25,000 keys per second... According to my math, with my current 'guesses' for the possible chars in each position, I have 9,663,676,416 keys to check. At the current rate, this run should have checked the entire keyspace that I am checking in around 4 days.

EDIT:

I am using an old i5-3570k... 8 Gigs of RAM... Windows 10, Python 3.6... nothing really special... and it turns out I was waaaaaay off with my estimates... my code is still running after I got back home tonight from work... so it probably has another day or so to run

As for checking the privkey against the address... I'm using the privkey_to_addr() function from the pybitcointools python library... basically you pass in a privkey and it returns the address (or generates an exception for a 'bad' privkey)... I either catch the exception (and basically ignore it) or compare any returned address against "1qkCBiEjY4GAUFBcrsDXqyM6EPbZKTqCW" which is the published address.

I should probably do the Base58CheckSum thing, and looked into it briefly, but got confused by all the math and couldn't see any obvious "Base58Checksum()" type function, so I went with the first function I found that looked like it could tell me if the generated privkey matched the bitcoin address

Yeah... I saw that c# code and how you were building your char arrays... I've basically done the same thing, but with some slightly different assumptions for a couple of the clues... I've written it in Python (was fun learning the syntax and structure for python this afternoon) and it is currently grinding away testing my privkeys against the public address that was published.

My spreadsheet tells me that with my assumptions (uppercase for Surname and company name clues etc) I have 1,811,939,328 keys to test... will be interesting to see how long it takes to complete the run...

Is anyone still actively working on this puzzle? I see the prize is still unclaimed... but it seems like the discussion here has slowed down. I have a couple of ideas that may or may not help for a couple of the clues...

Is there a list of the most recent "guesses" for each tile somewhere? I see a couple of lists in this thread, and the nicely annotated picture with the green/red dots etc... but they seem a little old and there has been discussion since then... I was hoping that I might be able to work on a code based solution that might be able to brute force the solution if we can narrow down some of the "unknown" ones.

Not one for generally being a grammar/spelling nazi or anything... and given that the developer is registered in the Phillipines... I am however a little concerned at the rather poor math/explanation offered on that website...


Firstly, taking a fee means that it isn't free...

Secondly, last time I checked... 2% of 0.01 is NOT 0.001... 0.001 would be 10%. I suspect that in the very confusing bolded part of their message that they meant to say: "We will deduct a processing fee of 0.001 BTC or 2% of the transaction amount, whichever is higher."

Also, as someone else pointed out, there isn't any sort of explanation into how the wallet works, where the funds are stored, who holds the keys etc... and the wallet seems to just be a side business on them providing a paywall service for your website.

Would have to recommend staying away from this one.

But what if I don't own any of those things? Say I access this forum, and the internet in general, from internet cafes and all my coins are in paper wallets... Then I have no investment in precious metals right?

Also, that bitcoin can be "hacked" by "bad press" is pretty much true of almost anything of value... ask any politician that has been on the end of a smear campaign... or maybe ask Samsung are fairing with their precious metals "investments" at the moment in the wake of the Galaxy Note 7 fiasco 

Still... 10/10 for making bitcointalk a slightly more interesting place with your musings (trololololling?) on the bitcoin world in general... 

This is probably the most sensible thing I've seen suggested here.

I'm not quite sure where the "it is easy to make 'free' money with bitcoins" idea came about? possibly stories of people making $$$ from increase in value of bitcoins going from $1 to $600 etc being mutated into "lots of people making $$$ from bitcoins"... But I see a lot of "I'd like some easy money, tell me how?" type threads around here... I guess this is why all the HYIP/Ponzi schemes do so well

The short answer is that there isn't an easy option... there never really was, and there probably never will be... if you want some bitcoins, go make some money in the real world and then buy them.

The problem with trying to martingale in sports betting is that you don't get consistent odds, they always vary and sometimes don't reflect the true odds anyway... so just doubling your bet isn't going to help. You either have to risk a lot more money or take riskier bets to cover your losses... both of which increase your chances of failure.

The best thing is just don't get greedy... be willing to take modest profits rather than going for the big score.

I don't cry when I gamble... because I've already accepted that any money I gamble with is already gone... if I end up with anything left at the end of it or, in the best case scenario, I have made a profit, then I am effectively "winning" in my head... as I didn't lose all of it to the house

I never ever gamble with the thought that I will make money, so when I lose it doesn't make me sad... playing Overwatch on the other hand... man... rage city!

Halfway through the weekend... 5 from 6 with the only game I've missed so far was the West Brom v West Ham one... which I thought was a bit close to call and didn't end up betting on. Turns out West Ham are having a shocking start to the season in all competitions... 4-2 win to West Brom... incredible!

Have made some tidy profits so far from my predictions on Liverpool and the really decent odds of 1.84 that I got on Everton... Hopefully the last four picks up hold for my best weekend yet

I understand why they have the rules in place surrounding grid penalties for replacing various components on the cars (ie. to stop the big $$$ manufacturers just replacing engines after every race which the smaller teams can't afford to do) but it still seems overly harsh on the drivers... and kinda ruins the spectacle a little... I want to see the quality drivers in the quality teams racing against each other... not stuck at the back of the grid on a tight street circuit having to deal with the slower cars at the back

Also... Hamilton doesn't seem to like Singapore huh? a fairly average practice and qualifying from him... Rosberg just blew everyone away... incredible... he will be hard to beat in the race if he gets a clean start...

I predict carnage at the first corner

I doubt you will make much profit at all... I only did it as an exercise/investigation into how long it would take for variance to catch up with my betting strategy... Attempting to gamble for profit is, in my opinion, a fool's errand.

I treat gambling as a source of entertainment, so I like to try new things... and trying out the dicebot and the programming mode was a fun little project.

Basically, all I did was add a little feature to a basic "martingale" script that allows me to stop the betting on the next win... so I can set it going to bet for 100 bets (or until a certain balance is achieved or whatever) and then it will stop on next win, rather than ending on a loss at exactly 100 bets... sometimes it goes to 103 or 104 bets depending on strategy and odds being played.

So, if I am understanding this correctly... you are betting on one result on one site... and taking the opposite result on another... where the odds and payouts are such that whatever the outcome, you make money?

Sounds like a great plan if you can make it work