A Bitcoin puzzle was created on August 23, 2026, using information contained in the Genesis Block created by Bitcoin creator Satoshi Nakamoto.
The puzzle was contained in human-readable text in Bitcoin Block 963,629, as reported by the Galaxy Research X account. The creator of the puzzle used the information to generate a wallet with extremely low entropy, which he said required no backup.
This unusual on-chain challenge has since attracted the attention of blockchain analysts and the general Bitcoin community.
In a bid to unravel the puzzle, two questions were posed to the puzzle creator, according to Galaxy Research, which he answered. The first was whether the witness script was a hash lock, a multisig, or something else, to which the puzzle creator indicated it was a multisig. The second asked how many keys, what threshold, and how the keys were derived from the genesis block. The puzzle creator answered with two keys, adding "both required. The rest is for you to derive."
In a follow-up post on August 25, Galaxy Research indicated that the jackpot for the puzzle now has 125,779 sats while sharing clues from the puzzle creator: "The witness script is a multisig. Two keys, both required. The rest is for you to derive. Both keys use the same Genesis field, and there is no hash. Both keys are derived independently from Genesis."
Puzzle remains unsolved
Thorn, in his post, noted that the jackpot to be won from the puzzle is currently 142,779 sats (nearly $111). While he himself has not sent in any requests for hints, others have.
Based on the hints, a few facts are assumed: "a 2-of-2 multisig, both keys from the same Genesis field with no hash applied, derived independently, along the BIP48 path root > multisig > mainnet > genesis_data > script_type, the field is one The Times newspaper printed."
With these hints, Thorn stated he had ground more than 19.3 billion candidate scripts but ruled them out.
The Genesis Block, or Block 0, is the first-ever block on the Bitcoin blockchain, mined by Satoshi Nakamoto on January 3, 2009. Satoshi embedded a hidden message, "The Times 03/Jan/2009 Chancellor on brink of second bailout for banks," a headline from The Times on the same date. This message remains one of Bitcoin's most recognizable historical artifacts, and its connection to the puzzle remains significant.
While the Bitcoin puzzle remains unsolved, Thorn invited others working on it to collaborate, with the aim of solving it.
