The first set of clues in a new global Bitcoin treasure hunt have been revealed as participants try to find the keys to unlock a Bitcoin wallet.
Primitive Ventures, a global venture investment firm with a focus on blockchain and related technologies, is reportedly pulling the strings and will reward a $1 million Bitcoin bounty. Clues are popping up in physical locations as well as in online puzzles designed to help crypto detectives crack the code.
The keys to the million-dollar Bitcoin wallet have been divided into 1,000 pieces, and the first person to gather 400 of them can unlock the wallet and win the bounty. Along the way, players can even sell leads to other players.
The first set of keys are called the Jade Key, Bismuth Key and Mamouri’s Key. According to the treasure hunt website Satoshi’s Treasures,
“This treasure is not jewels or gold or the debased pieces of paper that pass for money in this sad Age; instead, it is Bitcoin, a digital Treasure forged from deep cryptographic truths.”
The first set of clues were designed to lead players around the globe to physical locations to find QR codes – from San Francisco Uganda.
Received a new message over @Blockstream Satellite. It appears to be a treasure hunt for $1,000,000 in #bitcoin, with included GPS coordinates for the first part of the hunt! ?????? https://t.co/M4mKMbQ8KU pic.twitter.com/HzkEJ8RFXc
— grubles (@notgrubles) April 15, 2019
But as the search for the Bitcoin jackpot begins, a sleuth named John Cantrell says he’s already cracked the first set of keys – from his computer.
“A QR code with the words ‘orbital’ were found at these locations and looked like this: (https://imgur.com/a/6rNmz7T).”
“If you read the QR code with your phone you will be directed to this url: https://satoshistreasure.xyz/k1.
At this URL you are prompted to input a passphrase to decrypt the first shard. An obvious first guess was to try the word ‘orbital’ from the QR code. Not surprisingly this worked! This reveals a congratulations page and presents the first key shard:
ST-0001-a36e904f9431ff6b18079881a20af2b3403b86b4a6bace5f3a6a47e945b95cce937c415bedaad6c86bb86b59f0b1d137442537a8.”
Primitive Ventures co-founder Eric Meltzer told CoinDesk he contributed a hefty portion of the Bitcoin bounty, with a number of anonymous angel investors filling in the rest. He says the clues have been created in fragments to ensure no single person currently knows how to unlock the loot.
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