Crypto Puzzlers

Who this is

One person with a YouTube channel called Crypto Puzzlers and a Reddit account called CryptoPuzzlers. The solution videos open with "hey everyone, this is JT", and that's about all the biography there is.

The format is always the same and it's a good one. A short clip, a grid of shapes and colours, and somewhere in the frames a private key or a seed phrase. The prize sits at an address in the description. Whoever reads the frames right takes it. The Reddit posts run from October 2020 to March 2022, with prizes in DOGE, ETH, Bomb Token and Banano, and solution videos followed on the channel.

Doge's Gambit and the Dogecoin pump

Doge's Gambit went up in December 2020 with $30 to $40 of Dogecoin in it, by the author's count. Seven weeks later Dogecoin had a massive day and the unsolved prize was suddenly worth $400, so it got a second post on r/dogecoin with the address this time. By the claim in May it was five or six thousand dollars.

Honestly, a puzzle maker couldn't ask for better marketing. The author said so too, more or less: glad it took a while, it was fun to watch the price go up.

What the record says

Three facts. The launch post and why this one was made harder. The repost with the price jump. And the solution video where JT says the solver wrote in after about a month of work. The rules of the chess board aren't here, they're answers on the two puzzle records, because they're about the puzzle, not about the person.

The record

static readonly author = party("Crypto Puzzlers", {
  key: "cryptopuzzlers",
  kind: PartyKind.Person,
  aliases: ["CryptoPuzzlers", "JT"],
  about: "YouTube channel and Reddit account that hid private keys in short video puzzles and paid the prizes in DOGE, ETH, BOMB and Banano.",
  profiles: [profile("youtube", "https://www.youtube.com/@cryptopuzzlers3890"), profile("reddit", "https://www.reddit.com/user/CryptoPuzzlers")],
  facts: [
    fact("Posted Doge's Gambit on r/dogecoin as two puzzles in one, …", LAUNCH, { date: "2020-12-11" }),
    fact("Put $30 to $40 worth of Dogecoin into Doge's Gambit and posted it again seven weeks later, …", REPOST, { date: "2021-01-29" }),
    fact("Opens the solution videos as JT and says the Doge's Gambit solver wrote in after about a month of work on it.", DOGE_SOLUTION, { date: "2021-05-11" }),
  ],
});