Bitcoin puzzle wallet hides key in 2009 Genesis Block data

An anonymous Bitcoin user, apparently a cryptographer, created a puzzle wallet using publicly available data from Satoshi Nakamoto's Genesis Block, mined in 2009, instead of randomly generated seed-phrase entropy. The user announced the puzzle on August 22 by embedding a 255-byte message in block 963,629 through the OP_RETURN field of a 500-byte transaction. Galaxy Research analysts identified the activity. The message accounted for more than half of the transaction's physical size, making it an oversized OP_RETURN, while the creator paid only 250 satoshis in miner fees, or 0.60 sat/vB. The message says everything needed to generate the wallet was already contained in the Genesis Block and describes the entropy as extremely low, deliberately narrowing the possible private-key search space. Potential clues include the block's hash and the text string "The Times 03/Jan/2009." The creator also introduced a paid-clue mechanism in which users send Bitcoin to a specified wallet address and receive increasingly precise clues based on the amount transferred. The crypto community is searching Satoshi Nakamoto's archives in an effort to link the cryptocurrency creator's digital signature to the puzzle wallet.

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