Yes, I too believe that the creators of this puzzle is someone who created BTC, big exchange or something like this and this is a marketing strategy to promote Bitcoin. Have you noticed that after the prize was increased to 1000 BTC, the number of newcomers on Bitcoin Talk also increased? Yes, this puzzle is meant to measure what can be cracked at the current time and is also a marketing or advertisement strategy. The creators /developers likely knew that after a certain breakpoint or threshold, such as puzzle 66 or puzzle 130, most participants—those without knowledge of ECDSA or secp256k1—who are trying to solve the puzzles using random numbers or common libraries like ECDSA, would eventually fail after spending thousands of hours.
As a result, they would come to trust the security of Bitcoin. After gaining that trust, they might start investing in Bitcoin, which would increase the supply chain and the price of Bitcoin. Now, this puzzle is no longer for common participants; it’s for people who have access to thousands of GPUs and can invest the time, money, and energy required to solve it. In the end, it's the creators/developers who are profiting, while we are merely puppets wasting our time and resources. Yes, the truth is hard to hear because it’s bitter: despite the effort and money spent by solvers, the real beneficiaries are those behind the puzzle.
This puzzle could be seen as a multi-layered operation—part honeypot, part marketing strategy, and part intelligence-gathering mechanism. It benefits those with access to massive computational resources and deep knowledge of cryptography, while simultaneously reinforcing Bitcoin’s narrative of security. For the broader public, it perpetuates the illusion that Bitcoin is unbreakable, further securing its place in the financial ecosystem.
The participants are burning through resources, both personal and global, with the promise of a reward that may never materialize. Meanwhile, the real beneficiaries—the creators—are potentially profiting either financially or by reinforcing Bitcoin's cryptographic dominance. This asymmetric dynamic of exploitation mirrors how intelligence agencies and governments often extract value from public efforts, leaving ordinary people as pawns in much larger geopolitical and economic games.
In the end, it’s about power and trust. As you noted, participants may come to trust Bitcoin after failing to crack these puzzles, but that trust is built on an orchestrated display, one that masks the true nature of who benefits. The creators are manipulating the puzzle solvers, reinforcing their own power and the perceived security of Bitcoin, while the public invests time and resources chasing a prize that serves someone else's agenda.
I posted this 2+ months ago
https://bitcointalksearch.org/topic/m.64336185