Hello all.
First. Congratulations to @tothemoonsands and Friends of Satoshi for making and releasing the new album
Proof of Beats. I love the music, the idea, the art, and appreciate the time and effort that went into the project. There are definitely some great tracks on the album and it is a fun item to add to my collection. Check out the official album thread here —>
PROOF OF BEATS.
Second. I wanted to share with you all a fun little rabbit hole I went down after I received and listened to my album, lucky no. 13.
I was familiar with some of the tracks on the record from Friends of Satoshi’s
SoundCloud, however after listening to the
Proof of Beats vinyl record a few times I thought a few tracks were a bit different. The one that stood out to me was side A, track 2,
Key Control. There is a sample of Andreas Antonopoulos that repeats throughout the track “If you control the Bitcoin keys, it’s your Bitcoin. If you don’t control the Bitcoin keys, it’s not your Bitcoin.” This sample is used exactly three times in the track; at 0:15, 1:30, and 2:19. Whenever this line played on the vinyl there was more “noise”. This was curious, and initially I didn’t think much of it. Eventually I decided to compare it to the SoundCloud and YouTube versions and the background noise on the vinyl was clearly absent. Hmmm.
A few days later I was listening to the record and thought I’d try playing it backwards, just for fun, to see if @tothemoonsands hid something fun for us. As some of you may know, with a little effort, records can be played backwards. Typically when a record is played backwards, there is no real useful music produced. But a track can be intentionally recorded backwards to produce a “hidden track” this is called backmasking. Famous examples include Led Zeppelin’s
Stairway to Heaven, Pink Floyd’s
Empty Spaces, and The Eagles’
Hotel California amongst many others.
The first track on side A,
Whonakamoto, didn’t have anything. Track 2,
Key Control, was the same, just gibberish and honestly I was a little disappointed. Then I remembered the “noise” around several points in track 2 and listened again. Nothing at 0:15, 1:30, or 2:19. But after the sample at 1:30 around 1:40 there is just instrumental music and when I listened to this segment backwards, I heard distinct rapid speaking. It was not anything easily understandable at first, but after I listened to it half a dozen times I realized it was letters and numbers, but fast, and I couldn’t discern any of them. I slowed the record down and could then hear individual numbers and letters more clearly, but still hard as they still went fast. I started to write them down and replay the track over and over and clearly these were hexadecimals. I must have listened to the track 100 times before I felt that I heard all the numbers and letters correctly. Eventually once I was certain I had them all and they were correct, I counted 64 characters and I knew this was not an accident.
Pause. I honestly was in a daze. I didn’t know what to think. Initially I thought it would be funny to play the record backwards, but I didn’t actually expect to find anything, and if I did, more like a message. You know, “Craig Wright is not Satoshi, tothemoonsands is” or something else funny or amusing. I was not expecting to hear letters and numbers and definitely not 64 hex characters. It is safe to say I was paranoid and going crazy. My heart races just recalling this.
Well obviously I went deeper down the rabbit hole and with a 64 character hex phrase I knew what I had to do.
Hex —> WIF version byte —> sha256 x2 —> 4 byte checksum —> convert base58.
This resulted, very clearly, in a private key. OH BOY.
Swept the key and could not believe my eyes.
THERE WAS 1.0 BTC IN THE WALLET. WHAT!?!?
I didn’t know what to do. I was floored. I feel like I cheated the system or stole the corns. How fitting, “not your keys, not your coins” was the literal clue to coins on the record. I am still going nuts and can not believe the series of events that all happened so quickly. I emptied the coins to a new address and took a deep breath. Whew. What a ride.
I have not told anyone, this is the first I have written or said to anyone, didn’t even contact @tothemoonsands. I just had to process it and see where it took me. I decided to write this for fun and to let others know about a cool easter egg hidden on the record.
To show the bitcoin easter egg prize I have included two signed messages. Below are two signed messages from the addresses involved. The first is signed from the address that was discovered with the private key on the record (bech32 verifies in electrum). One transaction in and one out, to my address. The second signed message is from the address I sent the coins to.
-----BEGIN BITCOIN SIGNED MESSAGE-----
April 19, 2020. PROOF OF BEATS EASTER EGG address. Found and swept by geophphreigh.
-----BEGIN SIGNATURE-----
bc1qgwcad9eee3kyflt9qr9d2lslh6k5fau6fxnkp7
IGW9Bkl4qANCn84AVAe7Jqm0pADEdooRLXmY99Rzx9sWQC8uDATLsvQNpJxDMp0g9PVGlX7XpK0mDHw
SGhPdke4=
-----END BITCOIN SIGNED MESSAGE-----
-----BEGIN BITCOIN SIGNED MESSAGE-----
April 19, 2020. This is the receiving address for PROOF OF BEATS EASTER EGG 1 BTC prize. Claimed by geophphreigh from bitcointalk.org.
-----BEGIN SIGNATURE-----
39S7TbXxomKNgrfMiB3bHohEWkLhpF4nFS
JFRFCySTi67+OC70oDgOQwdrDTbgAYaNF2Djqmhmzo07cURvAyGzL4BTkrz2aajbqViI8PW7tpPfVt3P1H5Pbnc=
-----END BITCOIN SIGNED MESSAGE-----
Well, I guess I don't know what to say at this point. It was a rollercoaster of emotion as I sorted it out. I have always seen bitcoin reward puzzles, but never could figure them out. This must have just been a crazy stroke of luck. Not sure what to do with the BTC, maybe I'll buy an island somewhere off the coast of somewhere and settle down and live the good life. Hm. Sounds good to me.
Oh, and by the way, this is all a joke. But seriously, love the album. Thanks for reading and playing along. Geophphreigh.
