Deleted

[HCP]

thanks, do you have any estimate of how many pk are you checking per second with that cpu?
...
and whatever you do first check your code with some correct private keys to see if it works

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:

[HCP]

So after nearly 20 hours...

1856000000 Addresses 2016-09-23 15:49:09.717791
1857000000 Addresses 2016-09-23 15:49:53.256838
1858000000 Addresses 2016-09-23 15:50:33.543255
1859000000 Addresses 2016-09-23 15:51:13.025167

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?

[HCP]

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

Start: 2016-09-22 20:14:22.330021
5J...M
5J...m
5J...M
End: 2016-09-27 03:03:08.780716
Total: 4 days, 6:48:46.450695

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...

[xhomerx10]

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

Start: 2016-09-22 20:14:22.330021
5J...M
5J...m
5J...M
End: 2016-09-27 03:03:08.780716
Total: 4 days, 6:48:46.450695

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...

 That is very disappointing. 
If we look at it from another perspective, it's actually good news because if we can't solve this puzzle even with the clues, imagine how safe our Bitcoins are from brute force cracking

[HCP]

That is very disappointing. 
If we look at it from another perspective, it's actually good news because if we can't solve this puzzle even with the clues, imagine how safe our Bitcoins are from brute force cracking

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:

Checking [8589934592] Keys...
Start: 2016-09-28 17:08:17.702438
1000000 Addresses 2016-09-28 17:08:53.797499
2000000 Addresses 2016-09-28 17:09:30.093016
3000000 Addresses 2016-09-28 17:10:06.433803
.
.
.
1103000000 Addresses 2016-09-29 04:09:38.866786
We have a possible winner!:  5JKPapJwgyEij3sxYRAEnixyiFgxqkVhgZXv9bWWknBexegx6tM
1104000000 Addresses 2016-09-29 04:10:14.934280
.
.

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

[Coding Enthusiast]

lol, thanks for sharing. my only missing character was jigsaw which i could never think of starting with j because i thought it is a puzzle piece
apparently my English sux

a puzzle consisting of a picture printed on cardboard or wood and cut into various pieces of different shapes that have to be fitted together.

♯♯congrats.

[Sarthak]

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

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

Congratulations And I really appreciate uploading that script. I'm learning python and I expect that script will help me to learn even better

[xhomerx10]

That is very disappointing. 
If we look at it from another perspective, it's actually good news because if we can't solve this puzzle even with the clues, imagine how safe our Bitcoins are from brute force cracking

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

[redacted]

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:

Checking [8589934592] Keys...
Start: 2016-09-28 17:08:17.702438
1000000 Addresses 2016-09-28 17:08:53.797499
2000000 Addresses 2016-09-28 17:09:30.093016
3000000 Addresses 2016-09-28 17:10:06.433803
.
.
.
1103000000 Addresses 2016-09-29 04:09:38.866786
We have a possible winner!:  5JKPapJwgyEij3sxYRAEnixyiFgxqkVhgZXv9bWWknBexegx6tM
1104000000 Addresses 2016-09-29 04:10:14.934280
.
.

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

 I didn't think anyone was ever going to solve the puzzle.  Perseverance was the real key
Congratulations! 

[coindancer]

well, a bit late, but hey congrats! you deserve it for the work you put in. but i guess it was a worthy experience and a nice way to learn some coding.
i really hope there are more puzzles like this out there.   

[Chris!]

That is very disappointing. 
If we look at it from another perspective, it's actually good news because if we can't solve this puzzle even with the clues, imagine how safe our Bitcoins are from brute force cracking

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

Congratulations! Man that took a lot of time & effort! I was lightyears behind you guys so I gave up a long time ago. Well deserved!