Anonymous coder hides Bitcoin puzzle in Satoshi's genesis block

Bitcoin just got its own treasure hunt. An anonymous cryptographer has planted a wallet puzzle inside the blockchain itself, and the clues, they claim, all lead back to the very first block Satoshi Nakamoto ever mined.

The puzzle surfaced when Galaxy Research, a crypto research firm, spotted an unusual message tucked into a Bitcoin transaction at block 963,629, recorded on August 22. Written in plain English and stamped permanently onto the blockchain, the 255-byte note reads almost like a taunt.

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A note left for anyone bold enough to try

"I made a Bitcoin puzzle using information contained in the genesis block created by Satoshi to generate the wallet," the anonymous creator wrote, before adding the kicker:

"The entropy is extremely low. I didn't even need to back anything up. Everything I needed was already in the genesis block. Good luck!"

In plain terms, the creator says they built a Bitcoin wallet using only public data sitting inside Satoshi's original block, no secret seed phrase, no backup, nothing hidden away.

Entropy refers to the randomness used to create a wallet's private keys; the lower it is, the more guessable the keys become. By openly declaring the entropy "extremely low," the creator is essentially daring people to reverse-engineer how the wallet was made.