[FUN] On Twitter, @Phemex_official Hide 2.1 BTC In The Latest Portrait of Satosh

[hugeblack]

I don’t know if the puzzle is solved but if you know someone who is smart enough then ask him to join, the prize is 2.1 Bitcoin.
https://twitter.com/Phemex_official/status/1217808220703473664 (If you are looking for profit, check out recent responses before starting.)

I hope there will be similar puzzles in the forum, with much less difficulty than this one.

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[o_e_l_e_o]

I love puzzles like this. I got close to solving the Ledger Christmas giveaway that was discussed on here, but this looks a fair bit harder.

The first 21 digit prime in e is 957496696762772407663, which starts at position 51 after the decimal point. In hex, that is 33E7EF9CABBAF6C56F.

I assume there is something hidden in the maze, but I can't figure it out. The only "entrance" is beside the word "first", and several sections of the maze are entirely self contained and don't lead anywhere. I wonder if there are words hidden in either the maze walls, or if you "solve" the maze for a given destination?

Also not clear on the relevance of "Satoshi's" face or the BTC, ETH and XRP letters.

[pooya87]

Also not clear on the relevance of "Satoshi's" face or the BTC, ETH and XRP letters.

free advertisement
Phemex that this twitter account is advertising is brand new and is a "cryptocurrency derivatives exchange" that has all these coins listed.
same reason why the puzzle was created. with such a high reward the name would spread all over cryptocurrency forums...

[o_e_l_e_o]

I'm still no further forward on this. Wonder if there is a link between 21 digit prime and the 2.1 BTC prize, or if they were just picked since 21 is our supply cap?

Someone on github is computing every combination of the prime and various encodings of the words BTC/ETH/XRP/Phenex, in a variety of orders (https://github.com/olalonde/phemex-puzzle/blob/master/notebooks/solution.ipynb). A private key in base 10 would have 78 characters. Wonder if he's on the right lines here, but there aren't enough characters in any of his results. Or maybe it could be numbers of relevant words on the BIP39 word list?

Guess I'm going to be waiting for the hints they have promised to release in a few days.

[BrewMaster]

do we even know what the address that contains the 2.1 bitcoin reward is? i saw other people post a bunch of addresses, some even had balances but nothing that lead to this puzzle.
even if you wanted to brute force it, you have to know the address otherwise you're left with building a big blockchain index and then looking up the results that is not worth it.

[o_e_l_e_o]

The confirmed it on their website here: https://phemex.com/references/articles/try-to-solve-our-2-btc-puzzle

The address in question (https://blockchair.com/bitcoin/address/1h8BNZkhsPiu6EKazP19WkGxDw3jHf9aT) only actually contains 1.1 BTC. The other 1 BTC has to be claimed via a Phemex account as a "trading bonus". I can't find anything to say what a "trading bonus" is, and if you can actually withdraw the additional 1 BTC or whether you have to trade x amount of volume first or whatever. I also can't seem to find anything on their website about what KYC requirements they would require to withdraw it, other than their Privacy Policy which states they "may" collect all the usual suspects, from photographs of ID to utility bills and bank account numbers.

[minairia3]

do we even know what the address that contains the 2.1 bitcoin reward is? i saw other people post a bunch of addresses, some even had balances but nothing that lead to this puzzle.
even if you wanted to brute force it, you have to know the address otherwise you're left with building a big blockchain index and then looking up the results that is not worth it.

Yes the address is well indicated on their contest post. If you check the address there is a balance of 1.1btc and the 1btc will be given to you if you proven that you already control the btc wallet. But the payment is on their website.

That's one thing about their puzzle, of course it will be hard to decipher cause the prize isn't small as you think. The winner of this puzzle contest will be indeed deserving knowing the clue is quite limited.

[hosseinimr93]

They have released some hints. Visit this link.

According to their hints, words that appear in the picture should be converted to a 27-digit number and the private key is big integer.
Even that number is found and is combined with that 21-digit prime, I don't know how can reach a WIF from an integer.

[bgaf]

They have released some hints. Visit this link.

According to their hints, words that appear in the picture should be converted to a 27-digit number and the private key is big integer.
Even that number is found and is combined with that 21-digit prime, I don't know how can reach a WIF from an integer.

Like even we converted the words into digit. It's gonna be hard to decipher how to combine all the digits and form a private key easily. But this hints is a big help already and I'm pretty sure some are already have an idea how to come up a perfect combination for this.

[pooya87]

~I don't know how can reach a WIF from an integer.

a private key is a 256 bit integer in first place then we convert it to a human readable string so that it could be read and stored easier.
to convert an integer to a WIF all you have  to do is to convert it to a byte array using the big-endian notation and then convert that byte array to string using the base-58 encoding with a 4 byte checksum at the end and a version byte at the start.
https://en.bitcoin.it/wiki/Wallet_import_format