---
title: "coin_artist"
description: "Marguerite deCourcelle paints wallet keys into pictures. TORCHED H34R7S held five bitcoin for three years before a programmer read the flames."
canonical_url: "https://puzzles.agntn.dev/authors/coin-artist"
---
# coin_artist

> Marguerite deCourcelle paints wallet keys into pictures. TORCHED H34R7S held five bitcoin for three years before a programmer read the flames.

<author-facts author="coin-artist">



</author-facts>

## Who this is

coin_artist is the handle. Marguerite deCourcelle is the name she uses in public with it, on stage, in interviews and on the Sotheby's lot for the painting. She made [TORCHED H34R7S](https://puzzles.agntn.dev/collections/coin-artist) at Easter 2015 with Rob Myers, as the last piece of a series called The Legend of Satoshi Nakamoto, and it took until 2018 for someone to get the key out. Later she founded Blockade Games, which builds puzzle games on blockchains. Same instinct, bigger canvas.

## How the key went in

She told Vice, after the solve. The WIF and a marker phrase went into a bit string. The bit string was XORed with a six bit key read off the ribbons in the painting. The result was painted as flames: short or tall, red or yellow border, narrow or wide, purple or green inside, four bits each. Read the inner border clockwise and the outer flames the other way. That's on the record as a fact with the article as its source, because it's the author's own account of the construction and nobody else's.

## What the record says

Four facts, four different publishers. The CBC interview for the making of the painting. Vice for the encoding. Sotheby's for the painting's later life under her name. A 2019 interview for Blockade Games. None of them is her own site, which she doesn't keep in a form the record could cite, so the profile list is her X account alone.

## The record

```ts [src/collections/coin-artist.ts]
static readonly author = party("coin_artist", {
  key: "coin-artist",
  kind: PartyKind.Person,
  aliases: ["Marguerite deCourcelle"],
  about: "Crypto artist and game designer who painted TORCHED H34R7S with a wallet key inside, …",
  profiles: [profile("twitter", "https://x.com/coin_artist")],
  facts: [
    fact("Made the painting at Easter 2015 with the artist Rob Myers, …", "https://www.cbc.ca/radio/asithappens/…", { date: "2018-02-12" }),
    fact("Told Vice how the key went in: …", "https://www.vice.com/en/article/heres-the-solution-to-the-3-year-old-dollar50000-bitcoin-puzzle/"),
    fact("Sotheby's catalogued the physical painting under her name …", "https://www.sothebys.com/buy/…"),
    fact("Introduced in a 2019 interview as founder and CEO of Blockade Games, …", "https://www.scarlettsieber.com/tech-tuesday/marguerite-decourcelle", { date: "2019-09-04" }),
  ],
});
```


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