Riddles and Brain-Teasers for Bitcointalk Members (Newbies – Members)

[Pmalek]

I am trying to come up with some entertaining ways to engage newbies in learning some basics about bitcoin, crypto, and online security.

I came up with the idea of creating stories and riddles about ways in which people can lose their coins or have them stolen. I hope our youngest forum members will find them interesting to read and discuss what went wrong. Hopefully, that will teach them how to properly secure their assets and not repeat the same mistakes as the unlucky individuals in these made-up stories.

If there is enough interest in the topic, I will add new stories regularly and handout rewards in the form of merits to the quickest and most-complete answers. 

Riddles and Brain-Teasers for Bitcointalk Members (Newbies – Members)

Local Rules:

•   This thread is intended for users of Newbie, Jr. Member, and Member rank.
•   Everyone else can freely comment, give suggestions, or propose corrections. Still, I would like to ask you not to answer the questions and give our beginners a chance to participate.
•   If you have suggestions on what kind of riddles and stories I should post next, please PM me.
•   To prevent the possibility of abuse, I WILL NOT merit a newbie whose registration date is after a riddle was posted. Your account has to be older than the date of the problem you are solving.
•   Pay attention to the stories, check the pictures, and links to solve the riddles.

This thread will have two statuses: 
 
•   Open for all ranks
•   Open only to Newbie – Member ranks

When I post a new story, the thread will be in status: Open only to Newbie – Member ranks. It means that only users ranked newbie, jr. member, and member can post. When the thread is in this mode, this picture will be visible in the OP:



If nobody manages to solve the problem after a couple of days, I will change the status to: Open for all ranks. In this status, members of all ranks can take part in solving the problem. When the thread is in this mode, this picture will be visible in the OP:

Current thread status: Open only to Newbie – Member ranks

Riddle #1
Riddle #2
Riddle #3
Riddle #4
Riddle #5
Riddle #6
Riddle #7
Riddle #8
Riddle #9
Riddle #10

[1713495323]

1713495323

[Pmalek]

Let us start with an easy one…

Riddle #1

Tom watches a YouTube video about bitcoin. The video shows interviews with people who have made incredible profits in the last two years alone. After he watches the interview, Tom decides that he will purchase bitcoins.

He registers at a local exchange and buys bitcoin with his credit card. He remembers the YouTube video that he watched where several users recommended using Electrum for storing their coins. He decides that’s going to be his wallet of choice as well.

He opens up his Google Chrome browser and types “electrum” in the search field without researching further. The first result seems promising and looks like an ad of some sorts. It points him to Electrum’s website, as shown below:



He downloads Electrum after just a few clicks, installs the software, and is ready to initiate his first bitcoin transaction.

It’s already late, and he has to go to work in the morning. But before he goes to bed, he withdraws his coins from the exchange and sends them to his new Electrum wallet. When he wakes up in the morning and checks his phone for any new messages, he notices an email from his exchange that confirms that his withdrawal was successful.

Excited, he turns on his computer and opens the Electrum client. To his surprise, the wallet balance is 0! His wallet history shows two transactions: one incoming transaction from his exchange half an hour after requesting the withdrawal and one outgoing transaction from Electrum to an unknown address.

Tom knows that bitcoin is irreversible and that he can’t recover his coins. Disappointed with the outcome and for losing $300, Tom heads off to work. He can’t understand what he did wrong, so he decides never to buy bitcoin again.   

What happened here, and how did Tom lose his bitcoin?
What did he do wrong, and how should he have acted?   

[Marvelman]

What happened here, and how did Tom lose his bitcoin?
What did he do wrong, and how should he have acted?   

This is an easy one. I believe Tom didn't do a research of a website he found on Google and ended up on a fake Electrum website where he downloaded a hacked version of the Electrum software wallet. The moment he got the coins from the exchange, the wallet made a new transaction and sent the funds to the thieves.

How was he supposed to act? Perform a thorough evaluation of the website from which you will be downloading the new software. Learn how to recognize a fake website and never download Electrum from another source than electrum.org. When it comes to software wallets, it's also a good idea to learn how to check GPG signatures.

[BevNation]

What happened here, and how did Tom lose his bitcoin?
What did he do wrong, and how should he have acted?   

Tom was too hasty in his actions of downloading a wallet, in this case electrum wallet from an unofficial source denoted with .org.uk and as such, Tom downloaded a cloned Electrum bitcoin wallet and was phished for privacy details which enabled the scammer to have access to Tom's private details and as such, withdrew Tom's coins.

Tom should have firstly looked out for the official website for electrum wallet app using what ever source of information available to him or her, verifies the official site by asking on bitcointalkforum should he be a member or perhaps, ask a known crypto enthusiast before going ahead to download. After which, atom would be sure to ensure the wallets privacy details stay private before transferring his or her coins from the exchange.

[Cryptogtdaily]

Let us start with an easy one…

Riddle #1

Tom watches a YouTube video about bitcoin. The video shows interviews with people who have made incredible profits in the last two years alone. After he watches the interview, Tom decides that he will purchase bitcoins.

He registers at a local exchange and buys bitcoin with his credit card. He remembers the YouTube video that he watched where several users recommended using Electrum for storing their coins. He decides that’s going to be his wallet of choice as well.

He opens up his Google Chrome browser and types “electrum” in the search field without researching further. The first result seems promising and looks like an ad of some sorts. It points him to Electrum’s website, as shown below:

https://i.imgur.com/rYqba0bl.png

He downloads Electrum after just a few clicks, installs the software, and is ready to initiate his first bitcoin transaction.

It’s already late, and he has to go to work in the morning. But before he goes to bed, he withdraws his coins from the exchange and sends them to his new Electrum wallet. When he wakes up in the morning and checks his phone for any new messages, he notices an email from his exchange that confirms that his withdrawal was successful.

Excited, he turns on his computer and opens the Electrum client. To his surprise, the wallet balance is 0! His wallet history shows two transactions: one incoming transaction from his exchange half an hour after requesting the withdrawal and one outgoing transaction from Electrum to an unknown address.

Tom knows that bitcoin is irreversible and that he can’t recover his coins. Disappointed with the outcome and for losing $300, Tom heads off to work. He can’t understand what he did wrong, so he decides never to buy bitcoin again.   

What happened here, and how did Tom lose his bitcoin?
What did he do wrong, and how should he have acted?   

Tom just got so much greedy by hearing about profits from one YouTube video and without researching about what is bitcoin? How to buy? Which are safe places to store it? Etc. He just bought btc. He didn't research about which are are safe ways to store crypto? And by just hearing from an YouTube video he go to download electrum wallet! When he search for electrum wallet. he didn't check the url of that site that is it official or a scam website? and end up with a hacked wallet. It was already late so he was tired up and without checking apps authenticity he sent btc and hacked app automatically sent that funds to hacker!

Tom should not get blind with greed and do some research about btc trading and storing! There are many articles about crypto knowledge and YouTube videos also about it! He should research about at least couple of weeks and then when he become confident he should start investing!

[Mr.right85]

Of a truth, this is just why you can't tell new investors into crypto currency otherwise, that it isn't a scam or ponzi. When upon first attempt, they have there funds chatted away. Well, to answer the questions

1. Tom out of ignorance downloaded a cloned Electrum wallet app from Google by trusting the first thing Google suggested instead of verifying if it was the official wallet or not.

2. Tom should have done a lot more of one above, that is, Tom should have ensured to verify the wallet app being downloaded is from the official source or site before going ahead to install and transfer his coin to the et address.

[Obi theo]

What happened there was
 Tom was scammed of his Bitcoin, not by the exchange or his wallet but by the ignorance of not further researching more into Bitcoin and understanding it to a certain height, he had no information about wallet or crypto ,he was in for the profit.
 2 what did he do wrong and how should he have acted?
  Tom was wrong in all aspects , buying what he doesn't know much about, downloading a wallet without no knowledge and transferring his Bitcoin without private key which he never knew about ,Tom would have research further into Bitcoin or cyrpto , which I believe with more research would have introduced him to kinds of wallets, uses of private keys, etc.

[Pmalek]

<Snip>

That's correct. Tom was in a hurry and downloaded the first result that Google displayed. The first displayed result in Chrome is often a Google ad, and often these types of ads have been used to direct users to fake phishing sites and malware infected wallets. If Tom has acted smarter and done some research, he would have realized that electrum.org . uk is a phishing site. The only official site of Electrum is https://electrum.org/#home and there is even a warning at the top of the page that informs users not to download the wallet from any other sites.

The software he downloaded from the fake site was malware-infected. It was designed to empty the wallets of its users and send the transactions back to the hackers. Tom also didn't follow the recommendations on Electrum.org to verify the signatures of the wallet he downloaded. Had he done that, he would have realized that he was using a fake app.

The thread is now open for all ranks. I will post a new riddle soon...

[o_e_l_e_o]

Lots of people identifying the problem, but only one person identifying the correct solution: Verify the GPG signature!

The people saying you should always make sure to only download from the official site - electrum.org - are not wrong, but that isn't enough to guarantee your safety. Websites can be hacked. Hosting servers can be hacked. GitHub can be hacked. MITM attacks exist. There are a lot of ways you could still download a piece of malware even from the official site.

The only way to guarantee you are using the legitimate version of Electrum compiled and published by ThomasV, is to verify the signature of the file you downloaded using his public key. If you don't know how to do this, check out the guides below:

https://bitcoinelectrum.com/how-to-verify-your-electrum-download/
https://bitzuma.com/posts/how-to-verify-an-electrum-download-on-windows/
https://bitzuma.com/posts/how-to-verify-an-electrum-download-on-mac/
https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=5240594.0

[Pmalek]

Riddle #2

The year is 2018. Anna works in the most prominent law office in town, and she just received her yearly bonus of $2.000 from her boss. During the lunch break, some of her colleagues talk about investing their bonuses in Bitcoin. She remembers watching news reports about Bitcoin and crypto on several occasions throughout the last couple of months. She decides to give it a try.

She has no experience with cryptocurrencies and thinks, how hard can it be? She powers on her computer and visits the only crypto website she has ever heard of, Bitcoin.com. Between the options Bitcoin Cash and Bitcoin Core, she clicks on the Cash version. She wants to buy digital coins, so that’s cash. What is she going to do with Core anyway, and is that even a thing?


Image source: A thread on Bitcointalk that I won't link to, to not give away the answer.

She purchases the coins with her credit card. She withdraws them to a legacy address on her non-custodial bitcoin wallet. After a few days, she opens up her wallet to check the value of her coins. But the wallet is empty.

-   She sent the coins to the correct bitcoin address.
-   She used a genuine wallet.
-   The wallet has synced with the blockchain, and there are no other problems with it.


Why is her wallet empty? What did she do wrong, and how can she correct the situation?

[*1Bishop1*]

Riddle #2

The year is 2018. Anna works in the most prominent law office in town, and she just received her yearly bonus of $2.000 from her boss. During the lunch break, some of her colleagues talk about investing their bonuses in Bitcoin. She remembers watching news reports about Bitcoin and crypto on several occasions throughout the last couple of months. She decides to give it a try.

She has no experience with cryptocurrencies and thinks, how hard can it be? She powers on her computer and visits the only crypto website she has ever heard of, Bitcoin.com. Between the options Bitcoin Cash and Bitcoin Core, she clicks on the Cash version. She wants to buy digital coins, so that’s cash. What is she going to do with Core anyway, and is that even a thing?


Image source: A thread on Bitcointalk that I won't link to, to not give away the answer.

She purchases the coins with her credit card. She withdraws them to a legacy address on her non-custodial bitcoin wallet. After a few days, she opens up her wallet to check the value of her coins. But the wallet is empty.

-   She sent the coins to the correct bitcoin address.
-   She used a genuine wallet.
-   The wallet has synced with the blockchain, and there are no other problems with it.


Why is her wallet empty? What did she do wrong, and how can she correct the situation?

Hello. It seems to me that she was not boiling what she wanted. She wanted BTC and bought BCH. Now she needs to convert her BCH to BTC. Maybe she bought BTC and is now looking at BCH? One out of two )

[Pmalek]

One out of two )

Well, which one is it? You started off good, but than you got off track. Look at the screenshot. Which coin did the site highlight and what did she buy?
Where are the coins, and how does she gain possession of them? Remember, her bitcoin wallet shows no balance. What does Anna need to do?

[rosenbauer02]

Riddle #2

Anna thought she bought bitcoin but it was bitcoin cash. Bitcoin cash would not be compatible with any bitcoin wallet because bitcoin cash or BCH in short is a different coin and only alternative coin to bitcoin in abbreviation of BTC. BTC and BCH are again completely different, hence the transaction she had made will not appear to bitcoin wallet neither to blockchain.

Because both BTC and BCH can sometimes share a similar address format (Legacy address format), it is possible to accidentally send a Bitcoin Cash (BCH) transaction to a Bitcoin (BTC) address, but the funds will only exist on the BCH blockchain.
If you have the same backup phrase for both your BCH and BTC wallets, then the sent BCH will automatically show up in your BCH sub-wallet, so you don’t need to recover them.

If your BTC wallet that received the BCH transaction has a different recovery phrase, then you will need to follow the instructions below to recover your BCH:

1. Press "Home" icon in the bottom left side of the app

2. Press "Add +" on the right of the "Wallets" section

3. Import a wallet. Choose the “Recovery Phrase” tab and make sure that the "coin" is set to (BCH)

4. Enter your (BTC) wallets 12-word recovery phrase and press “Import wallet”.

5. The recovery wallet will be imported to your BCH wallets list. Your Bitcoin Cash (BCH) will now appear in your BCH recovery wallet.

https://support.bitcoin.com/en/articles/3680104-i-accidentally-sent-bch-to-my-btc-wallet

Anna could still recover her funds by obtaining BCH wallet. However, in this case it was being bought in an exchange wallet so I still need to figure it out how could he she recover the funds using the BCH wallet in the exchange.

Lesson learn,

No knowledge is better than half knowledge. Having little knowledge is more dangerous than no knowledge at all. This will also goes similar to the phrase that "curiosity kills the cat." Whatever the things we do especially in cryptocurrency, one should learn first get the full knowledge needed to get it done successfully not like Anna.

[Pmalek]

@rosenbauer02
Good. We have now established that Anna bought the wrong coin. Instead of bitcoin, she purchased bitcoin cash. However, the coins are no longer on the exchange. She withdrew them to her personal wallet.

She withdraws them to a legacy address on her non-custodial bitcoin wallet.

Is there something that she can do with the wallet/wallets to gain custody of the purchased coins, and what is it?

[*1Bishop1*]

One out of two )

Well, which one is it? You started off good, but than you got off track. Look at the screenshot. Which coin did the site highlight and what did she buy?
Where are the coins, and how does she gain possession of them? Remember, her bitcoin wallet shows no balance. What does Anna need to do?

Anna bought BCH instead of BTC. She checks wallet BTC, it will be empty. Anna has private keys from his wallet. She needs to change BCH to BTC and she will be happy)
I am a beginner, I tried to answer correctly, but I probably have little knowledge. I use online wallets)

[rosenbauer02]

Is there something that she can do with the wallet/wallets to gain custody of the purchased coins, and what is it?

Anna should download a BCH wallet which has BTC wallet support too. She will going to use the seed phrase of her BTC to access the BTC address where she uses to send her purchase BCH. There are instruction in where other wallets could retrieve those BCH stored in BTC address. There were mentions about recovery tool that can scan and transfer BCH coins from BTC address to the BCH wallet.

This is a little bit complicated for me since I can't speak about the technical aspect of wallets but these are the only ideas that has derived after making some google search. I just overlook this before and didn't care at all because I am confident that I could not get mistakes when transferring bitcoins or any alternative coins like BCH. So, this could be a  perfect time to ask or see the possible answers I could get in the OP riddle. I think this is not literally a riddle but more on an application of ideas learn about bitcoin and wallets.

Anyway, I was happy that I get the right answer it was a bit easy for me but the follow up question was a little bit difficult to my current knowledge about cryptocurrency.

[Pmalek]

We are missing one more crucial piece of the puzzle.

@*1Bishop1*
You are correct. Anna can get the private key from her non-custodial bitcoin wallet. Before exchanging the bitcoin cash for bitcoin, she needs to do something with the key because she still doesn't have her coins. What does she need to do?

@rosenbauer02
Instead of the recovery phrase, can she use another "private" string that is derived from the seed? Hint: Look at the suggestions and my answer to *1Bishop1*. There is no need to use recovery tools, she has everything she needs already. She is just missing a certain wallet and something private that can be derived from the seed. What is she missing?

[*1Bishop1*]

If Anna has a wallet that she started in another service, then she probably needs it to import it to the Bitcoin.com service using her keys?
I never used bitcoin.com, but I really want to come to the right answer )))

[rosenbauer02]

If Anna has a wallet that she started in another service, then she probably needs it to import it to the Bitcoin.com service using her keys?
I never used bitcoin.com, but I really want to come to the right answer )))

I guess this would be the right answer to the missing key of the answer. I do believe the answer would be right roughly 95% chance that this would be the answer.

Anyway, I am looking forward to answer another riddle if you permit to answer. I just ask this in advance so I will be able to know if I could still participate in the discussions. I am glad to learn a lesson for free without paying a user for me to learn. This is an opportunity actually because I do believe that there are things I overlook that might be needed or come in handy in the future.

As far as it also concerns with other newbie, they could get a lot of idea in this post where the OP had started. The world of cryptocurrency is broad and many to discuss with   . However, due to thousands of post being made daily other important post like this will get burried in the bottom in which I think this is an active discussion free for all posts.

[Pmalek]

@*1Bishop1* and @rosenbauer02
You guys almost got it all. And yes, feel free to discuss any other riddles I come up with in this thread.

Just to get a complete answer, I have opened the discussion for all ranks.
Current thread status: Open for all ranks

Any Bitcointalk member who wants to chip in, feel free to do it now.