Topic: Bitcoin puzzle transaction ~32 BTC prize to who solves it - page 83. (Read 230402 times)

What are the tax implications of this in the US, I am assuming it would be not taxable unless you sell because when you find a privkey you technically now own that wallet so when you send it to another of your wallets that would be considered transferring between wallets you own which according to coinbase is not a taxable event and if you sell I am guessing it would be considered as regular income.

So you claim that RBF does not work?
To experimentally prove that Replace-by-Fee (RBF) works for Bitcoin (BTC) you can follow these steps:

Ensure you have access to a Bitcoin wallet that supports RBF.

Acquire a small amount of Bitcoin for the experiment.

Using the same Bitcoin wallet, create a new transaction with a higher fee that replaces the original one. This involves using the RBF feature to broadcast the same transaction with a higher fee.

because it doesn't work and people panic here
the bot won't steal anything from you because when the 66 address is solved in a hundred years, only skeletons will remain of the bots XD

Why they didn't crack public key from puzzle 64?

The reasons people continue to engage in these activities are varied. They range from the intellectual challenge and community interaction to potential rewards and pure enjoyment. It’s much like any hobby where the journey and engagement often matter as much as, if not more than, the destination, including for those with mental health issues.

Bob can happily scratch his balls because he had NOTHING to lose, so nothing to cry over.

Bob wouldn't care at all if he gets even 1 satoshi out of the reward, because his costs were basically zero.

If we would all be rational and the word "hope" would be irrelevant for our species, nobody would even bother to run bots, because everyone would know there is nothing to win here. This information is known to everyone, it really depends what you are going to do about it, this is what makes the difference.

what is this description supposed to show? your story flattens the example we are discussing.
it's simple - without a private key and next - transaction in mempool that reveals the public key your "Bob" will only be able to scratch his balls, because his solution consists only of over using the BIP125... and if this transaction shows up - then Bob will be surprised because he will only see massive fee bidding

So, try to solve, any of this low bits puzzle, 66,67,68 ... is useless, cause there are many bots watching this addresses for their public key right?

If so, why still people discussing about it anyway?

Time even with 1 million 4090's it would take about 5.5632471e+53 years to solve 1 pubkey

Because of this:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wheat_and_chessboard_problem

You'd need all the atoms in the Universe each to work as a computer and storage in order to crack a 256-bit private key.

For 66 bits (with known public key), we'll soon be able to crack it using a toaster, and give it a few days to spit out the solution.

Hi everyone.
First, sorry by my english.

Ok, i wanna to understand about the very comments that say when public key puzzle 66 show up, that will be cracked and will use the private key to redirect the transaction.

If that is true, and I get about the hugeness of range that possible 256bits, my question is, why then the people don't use that algoritm, for example, to crack the "04678afdb0fe5548271967f1a67130b7105cd6a828e03909a67962e0ea1f61deb649f6bc3f4cef3 8c4f35504e51ec112de5c384df7ba0b8d578a4c702b6bf11d5f" pubkey from satoshi or any other known public key with huge btc amount?

This sounds extremely hypocritical.

Let's say we have two persons, Alice and Bob.
Then someone gives them an exercise:
A. find the solution of this problem:
  Given A as a hash of a hash of an EC point coordinate of some hidden number H between 0 and 2**65, find H
OR
B. find the solution of this problem:
  Given a point P of some hidden number H between 0 and 2**129, find H.

Now, if Alice and Bob are in their right minds, they would ask: why the hell would I even try either of these?
The Professor would reply:
"Well, if either of you solves A, they can use it to open this treasure chest of 6.6 BTC. If either of you solves B, you can use it to open this treasure chest of 13 BTC. Both of you can try to solve any of the two problems."

Well then, Alice and Bob can now compete to solve A, B, or both. This is not an exam for each of them to work on different problems. They are both motivated ONLY by the fact there is a possibility of a reward.

Now, Alice and Bob both need to invest resources (time, energy, intelligence, frustration) to solve either A or B.

The professor doesn't give a crap about how Alice or Bob reach the solution of either problem. Because the only thing that matters is: can they do it or not?

Now, it all boils down to Alice and Bob. Let's say Alice thinks problem A is more attractive because it sounds easier to solve.
Is that true? Well, this only depends on what Alice thinks. Alice now quits her day job to focus on problem A, gets a loan from the bank to buy computing power, and makes a big dashboard about all the predictions on how much time it will take her to find H of problem A. Total effort made by Alice is only motivated by the dream of a reward.

Bob doesn't care much about the problem, but he reads it more carefully. He observes that problem B is a subset of problem A.
So he generalizes a bit: hmmm, so if there's some strategy to solve B in a general case, can we apply it to A? He goes to the library and learns that problem B is actually solvable in ~2**65 steps, not ~2**129.
So he looks at problem A and asserts: if we would have knowledge of that point, then problem A is solvable in ~2**32 steps.

So Alice (if aware of Bob's observation, which is now published in all newspapers and seen on TV) has a choice to make:
- does she keep looking for H, knowing that its P point will be seen by everyone and is solvable in 2**32 steps?
- accepts her losses so far and calls it a day, shuts down the servers, goes back to the drawing board.

See, neither of them would really even deserve a reward to begin with:
- Alice was ignorant to the definition of the problem; she is trying to buy the solution for some ROI profit;
- Bob really doesn't even care of problem A, he just waits to see if problem A was reduced to having the point P.

Where is Bob unethical in all of this? Bob does not know or care what Alice is doing with her time, efforts, or money.

Bob is not stealing anything, he is simply also solving problem A in a very legitimate way.

Alice and Bob are both motivated only by the reward. Neither of them is trying to revolutionize anything here, because problem A is simple to solve once P is known, but while Alice is brute-forcing her way, Bob is patient.

Now, I think the difference between Alice and Bob is easy to understand.

If there was NO REWARD to solve problem A, it is clear that neither Alice or Bob would even bother.
So why would Alice get upset when Bob (or Eve, or whoever) solves the problem before they do?
Why would Alice's community (thousands of people all trying to do the same thing as Alice) not argue that each of them deserves the reward? Who exactly deserves the prize? Why would it have to be the first person who accidentally stumbles upon it? After so many CPU lightyears of invested work, billions of dollars spent, all of the quit jobs, loans, etc?

See where the hypocrisy really is in all of this. Everyone thinks they deserve something simply because they invested in something that was a stupid idea to begin with.

If Alice was smart, then Bob would still have the same exact strategy. Alice would do the same thing as Bob does. Which in the end would simply mean that everyone is not actually brute-forcing anything, resulting of an infinite wait for the public key by everyone; but which is all worth it because the effort to do this is close to zero, not an enormous amount of effort. But who am I to count the total amount of IQ of whoever wants to be Alice?

They will go to miners due to bot war. Honestly it's plain stupid to deal with that puzzles anymore. Lower bit ranges will be stolen in case of finding priv key, higher are unsolvable for a common man.

You could also negotiate a deal with a major miner, perhaps a 50%/50% split. Getting 50% is better than nothing in the bot war.

This is a cracking contest, an arms race of sorts. People attempting to solve this are basically competing with each other to get there first.

While one can work hard, another person can simply work smarter and snag the reward for themselves.

In this scenario one can only "claim ownership" of a coin after it makes it to an address one controls, and not a second before that.

Let's say I have just enough GPU power to solve a key in two years. After running my tools and paying electricity bills for 23 months you go for the same key with enough hardware to crack it in a day.

You say this is fine, but I'll be left in the dust after I spent time, money and effort just like someone who lost to a bot. Why is it so different?

Such is the nature of this challenge. People can outrun each other with better hardware/cracking tools, so why draw this line there now?

A bot is just another tool one can use, it is code just like Keyhunt or Kangaroo.

That said, I think everyone participating in this bot war will just be contributing to turn 6.6 Bitcoins into a transaction fee, it's sad and probably there will be no personal gain for anyone involved.

But I can guarantee you lots of people will be there doing that when the time comes.

"This was probably not the intention of this puzzle" I'd say this is exactly the intention of this puzzle, finding weakness in the protocol. This is one of them.

In the end it still boils down to "not your keys not your coins" which is a very old saying at this point.

nah, because of RBF - most of the prizes for lets say remaining sub 100 bit addresses will simply go to miners

I disagree with your reasoning.

We are not talking about ownership or rights to numbers, but to the right to get a reward for the time spent and the result with the technology used. if someone has spent time, money to look for the private key, and you want to use this information (because the transfer will reveal the public key, thus you have the possibility of RBF, and you are only waiting for this public key, not looking for the solution to the puzzle itself) then it is not ethical.

It can be compared to cheating on an exam.

This was probably not the intention of this puzzle, however, greed unfortunately often wins - such is the nature of some people. The end of the topic from my side - everyone is the maker of his own fate. It is interesting to see how this community has changed and what weaknesses this puzzle has uncovered.

I think that the miners will know that this is the puzzle address and will confirm the bitcoins of the first transaction
because it will automatically mean that he is the real solver of 66 puzzle address
I won't speculate, let's be surprised if the bot steals bitcoins from the right solver, then see if that solver comes here to complain

and in the end it doesn't matter 66 can be solved by 1 person on the planet and it may take another 10 years

maybe you're right, so all that's left is RBF on False, set the transaction to send high fees and finally send the transaction +- a minute before confirming the block