@Cain
edited
more from that month
BCC#2: A Puzzle (updated)
***Saturday, February 8, 2020*** Dear Readers, I thought I'd try something different in this column. Hidden in this article is money, only this isn't paper money, it's digital money. You can't just pick this money up, you have to ****master**** a puzzle to get it. But you *can* look at the money, which is so far the .25 BCH I’ve sent to this address: bitcoincash:qq933jalv4p4pzlygazplj3w3cvt4f9qmsd4rxw2v5 So how does this work? In order to be a ****champion****, you must find the 12 words that unlock the prize. If you’re unfamiliar with 12-word seeds, read this. https://read.cash/@Cain/the-ultimate-beginners-guide-to-bitcoin-cash-part-1-14f54c78 Some words will be more obvious than others, but each word appears in this article precisely once, and in the necessary order. You just need to find which ones. I know this isn't anything ****novel****. Bitcoin puzzles have been done by others, but I don't know if there's ever been one like this. I'm hoping this stunt can up the ****usage**** of read.cash. I want people to hear about this contest and try to win the prize like that treasure hidden out in Denver. But to find this money, you don't have to risk your life; you just need to put in the work, and maybe get a little lucky. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fenn_treasure Just think of yourself as a miner, only you're doing it by hand. I want people who don't know anything about crypto to read this article and learn about Bitcoin Cash. I envision them walking out of their dark ****cave****s as they see a whole new world open up to them, one that they didn't know was even possible, one that is less about putting up ****fence****s and more about opening up borders. ****Another**** reason why I'm doing this is for selfish motives. I'm not doing this just to be altruistic. If I'm being totally up****front****, I hope to benefit through generous tips or more views. With that said, I know that to make the big dollars we need orders of magnitude more people on read.cash, and the ****yard****stick we must measure ourselves by is not other crypto platforms like Steem or Publish0x, but sites like Reddit and Medium, and that's just for starters. I don't know how difficult this puzzle is. All I can promise is that if you're ****devote****d, you can do it. I'm going to ****increase**** the odds by revealing one word every time I publish a new column. Finally, whoever happens to unlock the prize has no obligation to reveal their identity. This money is non ****bind****ing. But it would help if you did just so it doesn't look like I took the money for myself. That's it. If you think this is a promising idea and want to help up the ante, send BCH to: bitcoincash:qq933jalv4p4pzlygazplj3w3cvt4f9qmsd4rxw2v5 Clues: Here’s all 2048 BIP39 words https://github.com/bitcoin/bips/blob/master/bip-0039/english.txt None of the seed words start with the letter "T" (i.e. this, that, time, etc.) None of the seed words are less than 4 letters None of the seed words appear more than once In all, there should be 30 words that quality. I'm assuming some words will be quite obvious. I have no idea if this will work. Maybe no one will be interested, or a coding whiz cheats to get the prize, but as my kid always says, "You never know until you try!" Thanks for reading.
58 comments
Well, if there are 30 qualifying words, that's barely 30^12 = 531441000000000000 combinations :) Hold my beer! :) No, really, I don't think it's solvable without more clues :) EDIT: ok, slightly less, since they don't repeat, so it's `30 * 29 * 28 * 27 * 26 * 25 * 24 * 23 * 22 * 21 * 20 * 19` = 41430393164160000 combinations - barely forty-one quadrillion :)
It's not a combination since the words are there in order, so odds are 1 in 86,493,225 =P I get people won't be able to solve as is, but I'm hoping they will go through the process of identifying the words, and with each additional clue, the number of possibilities will drastically come down. So if they're ready, they will be able to eventually guess the 12 words. Hope that makes sense.
Ok, I can't verify the 86 million figure, but I think you need to also specify what derivation path to use :) because different wallets use different derivation paths.
Aye, true that, we need to confirm the derivation path. I'm guessing Cain is using Bitcoin.com wallet (as he referred to it in one of his previous articles), and the first account available, thus yielding a derivation path of: m/44'/0'/0' (Subsequently combined with a /0 to refer to receiving addresses, and another /0 to refer to the first address in the list). Isn't that right, @Cain?
Verified how it got to 86 million: 30! divided by (12! times (30-12)!). However, I only found 28 words instead of 30. And I am, btw, methodical.
I am not 100% sure about the 30. It took a lot of work to write this so I did get lazy when counting ;)
I can only imagine that you: 1) wrote the entire article as a foundation, and that had to qualify as a satisfying version for yourself already 2) try to inject all those 12 words across the heaps of text 3) checking it twice, thrice, quarce, quince… that each of the word you meant to include was included exactly once and not more 4) check it again for order… 5) start to wish that word processors have not only a total word count feature but also an individual word count feature! I would have gone through more than a dozen coffee cups to achieve just half of that!
Steps 1 and 2 were combined. The rest is a decent guess. I like how your mind works.
Nice competition, but i dont have a bip to privkey algorithm to crack it.
Good haha
> the yardstick we must measure ourselves by is not other crypto platforms like Steem or Publish0x, but sites like Reddit and Medium, and that's just for starters. That's an interesting yardstick :) As of a few days ago our internal comparison shows the following: if we take 1 read.cash as a whole, then Publish0x = 25 times bigger, Steemit = 1,300x bigger, Medium = 18,000x bigger and Reddit = 200,000x bigger :) At least from Google's point of view. EDIT: I also think it would be pretty impossible to bead Reddit at all, since the amount of work required to post a link on Reddit isn't comparable to writing an article. So, Medium - maybe... Reddit - probably never gonna happen :)
You gotta dream big!
Best comment on this page! Answers just about all issues!
Interesting but I don’t think I’d have the time to solve this.
Yeah time = money.
Clever & fun idea.
Thanks Colin. Looking forward to seeing how this plays out.
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Not sure that I follow.
Maybe what vanilla5 meant was injecting hints that would lead readers to this page, when viewing said wallet address (through the explorer). Or at least so I thought.
why is my "initial" thought that this is NOT as hard as it appears .. after all, it's a fairly short article.. I had thought about this idea as well (hiding clues in read.cash articles), but I just couldn't get over how clever those bot programmers are, and how much work it would take to defeat their "brute force" capabilities.. I really do hope this works out well; as it would be fun to have more of these types of contests, specifically to attract more attention to the site :-)
Yeah, I assume if some smart coder really wanted to, they could easily brute force this, but I'm hoping they don't. Why don't you contribute by sending a tiny amount to the address? I want to see the prize grow.
> Why don't you contribute by sending a tiny amount to the address? absolutely want to support .. i will try to reup tomorrow (if I can hit a BATM) .. i'm running low (fumes) on BCH, been testing/spending for weeks now .. Cash Fusion is my latest endeavor
It seems more like a jigsaw game
Yes, it is. Try your luck.
>In all, there should be 30 words that _quality_. I'm assuming some words will be quite obvious. I just had to ask: was that intentional to spell the emphasised word as _quality_ and not as _qualify_ to be grammatically correct? 🤔
Lol no it should have said qualify. It was a mistake. But in case ur wondering neither word is a seed word.
"quality" is indeed a bip39 word: https://github.com/bitcoin/bips/blob/master/bip-0039/english.txt#L1402
> "quality" is indeed a bip39 word and yet it's NOT listed in ur 32 words above?
because Cain said it was a mistake and the word should have been qualify
Yeah I meant quality/qualify isn't one of the 12 words needed to unlock the prize.
lmao .. i'm lovin' this challenge
I found *~~33~~* 32 words and tested all combinations preserving order as found in the article in about 2 hours. Didn't find a matching address. The words I found in their order of occurrence: paper digital master address champion novel usage hidden risk life little lucky hand learn world open possible reason hope benefit make measure other increase reveal myself start letter appear *~~quality~~* always never until Edit (since this site doesn't allow you to reply to your own comments): I originally tested against the BIP44 derivation path (m/44'/0'/0'/0), but this sites uses a different derivation path: m/44'/0'/0'. I'm testing against that now. And that didn't work either.
What happened to _column_?
> What happened to column? read the clues: "None of the seed words appear more than once"
Wow, you're right! Thanks! I used a cross-referencing table to sort out the words and eliminate the ones showing up more than once. It seems I had an algorithm mishap in there.
I found out what was wrong with my table: a wrong address for a reference table. Now it gives me a count of 32 as opposed to 28. Minus _quality_, that becomes 31. But still does not match your count! What else am I missing? Hmm… 🤔
Doesn't matter. Those who paid for the hint say there are actually 50 words so the puzzle was intentionally misleading from the start.
Use m/44'/145'/0' in Electron Cash.
Tried. No go. Either it's an uncommon derivation or there's an error in the puzzle.
There's a few more that are plural, present/past participles, gerunds (walk[ing], cave[s], fence[s], border[s], devote[d], final[ly], bind[ing], interest[ed], thank[s]) , along with "yardstick" which could be two (yard and stick). Another could potentially be "test" (part of "contest") and "front" (part of "upfront"). So you're probably on the right track but I have a feeling some of these other words are part of the seed.
Given that he said there were about 30 seed words, that wouldn't make sense.
Given the apparent emphasis to include some of these words, I'd be surprised if at least some of them are not part of the seed. Also Cain had mentioned in Telegram the seed was generated with stock Electron Cash settings, which should be m/44'/145'/0' derivation path.
Yeah apparently I miscounted the 30. I'm going to post another column today and that should help explain. I know someone has already bruteforced the answer so it's there. But hoping people who crack it programmatically leave the prize for someone else. Thanks!
I really like this idea... You write some great articles.
Just saw that he's offering an extra hint for sale that gives the last word plus an extra "component" to the puzzle. Looks like we've been wasting our time.
Why do you people not read? I'm going to reveal that same clue in my next column. I did the satoshiwall thing to give that site some love as well. I have already added the little bit from there to the prize money. I'm not doing this to get rich one quarter at a time. I put up the .25 BCH myself. Why do you think I have ill intentions? You don't have to pay the quarter to see the clue in advance. In my next article I will reveal it as well. This whole exercise is to try and promote BCH, read.cash, and satoshiwall.cash. If you're like 15 years old, then my bad.
> This whole exercise is to try and promote BCH, read.cash, and satoshiwall.cash. sweet! just used satoshiwall.cash for the [first time](https://explorer.bitcoin.com/bch/tx/9bc31206af322e164d3f21ee1dcd58cf8bf3bfa951e88f9f34e36fb4e8378fe6) .. it also appears my "initial" thoughts were incorrect; u are quite the clever man Mr. @Cain 👏
Thanks nyusternie. I think people were jumping to the wrong conclusions so I'm going to have to address it in my next article.
> I think people were jumping to the wrong conclusions so I'm going to have to address it in my next article. never mind the trolls .. great contest!! (i see that someone claimed it)
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