The Great Print

Who this is

The Great Print is a brand and a studio in Basel. Behind it is one artist, Bartosz Lewicki. He says so himself on the artist page, so the record uses the name.

The medium is a ballpoint pen. Big drawings, dozens or hundreds of hours each. Why a pen? Ink can't be erased. "It reminds me of the Bitcoin blockchain", he says. Fair point.

The best line on that page, though: "I use my pen to write down my private keys". Usually that's a figure of speech. Here it's the riddle. Every original of the Genesis Collection hides a word of a wallet seed. The prints don't. And the 25th word stays with him until someone sends all 24.

And he signs things on chain. The riddle itself, the finished drawings, a honey badger in block 888,888. Small payments into the prize address with an OP_RETURN each. How many artists timestamp their work in Bitcoin blocks? Not many.

What the record says

Two facts. The artist page, for who he is and where he works. And the signature transaction from September 23, 2024, "The Great Print running The Great Riddle". The rules of the hunt sit in the hints on the puzzle, 12 of them so far. They're about the riddle, not the person.

The dataset holds 1 of his. Patience required, the words come out one drawing at a time.

The record

static readonly author = party("The Great Print", {
  key: "the-great-print",
  kind: PartyKind.Person,
  aliases: ["thegreatprint", "Bartosz Lewicki"],
  about: "Bitcoin artist in Basel who draws large ballpoint pen pieces and hides the words of a wallet seed in them.",
  profiles: [profile("website", "https://www.thegreatprint.net/"), profile("twitter", "https://x.com/thegreatprint"), profile("youtube", …)],
  facts: [
    fact("Bartosz Lewicki founded The Great Print and draws Bitcoin art with ballpoint pens in his studio in Basel.", ARTIST),
    fact("Signed the riddle on chain: 2100 sat to the prize address with the OP_RETURN text The Great Print running The Great Riddle.", SIGNATURE, { date: "2024-09-23" }),
  ],
});