A mysterious Bitcoin puzzle was dropped on-chain in August, with its author claiming the private key was somehow derived from Satoshi Nakamoto’s Genesis Block. What happened - On Aug. 22 at ~19:45 UTC, Foundry USA mined block 963,629, which contains a 500‑byte transaction carrying a 255‑byte human‑readable message in an OP_RETURN output. Galaxy Research flagged the transaction on Aug. 23 and independent block data confirm the block is part of Bitcoin’s confirmed chain. - The OP_RETURN text begins: “I made a Bitcoin puzzle using information contained in the genesis block created by Satoshi to generate the wallet…” and goes on to assert that the wallet’s entropy was “extremely low” and that “everything I needed was already in the Genesis Block.” The full message does not disclose the author’s identity, the derivation formula, or a complete solution. Technical and on‑chain details - The transaction paid a miner fee of 250 satoshis (≈0.60 sat/vB), making the on‑chain message cheap to publish. The 255‑byte payload represented more than half of the raw transaction size, so Galaxy Research called it an “oversized OP_RETURN” — notable for size, not a protocol violation. - OP_RETURN outputs are provably unspendable and are commonly used to embed permanent data on Bitcoin (tributes, timestamps, statements, puzzles, etc.). Once included in a block, the message becomes part of Bitcoin’s immutable transaction history — but that only proves the message existed at that time, not that its claims are true. Why the Genesis Block matters - The Genesis Block (block 0), mined by Satoshi on Jan. 3, 2009, includes public values such as its hash (000000000019d6689c085ae165831e934ff763ae46a2a6c172b3f1b60a8ce26f), timestamp, nonce, Merkle root, public key and the famous embedded headline: “The Times 03/Jan/2009 Chancellor on brink of second bailout for banks.” - The puzzle’s author implies some subset or transformation of those public Genesis values was used to generate the private key. Because those values are public, anyone can reproduce them — but a solver still must discover exactly which fields were used and how they were processed to recreate the alleged wallet. Security note - “Entropy” refers to unpredictability used when generating private keys. A secure wallet depends on high, private entropy. If a wallet is generated from well‑known public data and an attacker can reproduce the exact selection, ordering and transformation steps, the private key could be recreated — which is the risk the puzzle implicitly highlights. What to watch for next - The clearest proof that someone has solved the puzzle would be an outgoing transaction signed by the puzzle wallet’s private key or a verifiable signed message from that private key. As of publication, no verified solution, spend, or author identification had been produced. - This on‑chain message should not be interpreted as evidence that anyone has recovered lost Satoshi code or access to Satoshi’s keys. Until a valid spend or cryptographic proof appears, the event stands as a newly published Bitcoin puzzle that references public Genesis Block data — intriguing, but unresolved. Read more AI-generated news on: undefined/news