Satoshi birthday 7 million quiz

April 5, 2019. Satoshi's registered birthday. A Reddit account called AoiNakamoto funded a fresh wallet with 7,000,000 satoshis, about $350 back then, posted seven quiz questions to r/Bitcoin and told everyone to race for it. The wallet lasted five hours.

How the Satoshi birthday quiz works

Seven questions, one hash

The rules are two sentences: "The SHA 256 hash of all correct answers combined is the wallet seed. Insert one space between answers."

The questions are Bitcoin trivia with teeth. Which burn address holds more, 1AndrewYangForPresident2o2ozm6Pzd or 1TRUMPforPresident2o2oxxxxxAvY6s? What did r/Bitcoin look like on December 7, 2010? Which coprocessor did Hal Finney's RPOW run on?

What you type is the answer sentence, not the letter in front of it. Someone asked, so the author spelled it out: copy the option "as is, with spaces and period at the end", drop the leading d), one space between sentences, one hash from all seven.

Why brute force was supposed to lose

Four options times seven questions is 16,384 combinations. The author says so in the post, which is a bold thing to publish next to your own money. The bet was that nobody has a script ready on a Friday, so the race goes to whoever just knows the answers.

It worked. The thread is full of people with six answers right, stuck on question two, an Executive Order 6102 trap where the wrong option is correct except for its last three words. "before May 1st" should have been "before or on May 1st". That's the whole trick.

The hash is entropy, not a private key

This is where most of the competitors burned their afternoon. The hash is not a private key and not a passphrase. It goes into iancoleman.io/bip39 as hex entropy, comes back as a 24-word phrase, and the money sits at the first address of that wallet, m/44'/0'/0'/0/0. One guy burned hours pushing the hash straight into Electrum as a key and got nowhere with it.

The author confirmed both parts in the thread. Coleman's tool, and "Legacy Bitcoin address starting with 1."

What the birthday quiz record carries

The answer key rides on the hint

export const satoshiBirthdayQuizPuzzle = bitcoinPuzzle({
  id: "satoshi_birthday_quiz",
  address: p2pkh("1GNrvamE9WP4DL6hTicWy1aoqCUwFM2Jbz", "a8ac4bd83f5946f7e7b2452c1a9f28eba2bd13d2"),
  sourceUrl: THREAD,
  startedAt: "2019-04-05 09:45:02",
  status: Status.Solved,
  pubkey: compressed("02a3fdb91b1ad15a52e41be79bab912ac993d573ac015a7d27fc01ba61a9ff53fd"),
  key: seed("another blush custom lucky ... engine solve", "m/44'/0'/0'/0/0").entropy(
    "098310da4251c5b19359f3f6cca90bf1bd6f882e066512c4619cae56aef9529e",
    source(THREAD, "SHA-256 of the seven answer sentences, joined by single spaces"),
  ),
  prize: 0.07,
  hints: [
    official("To find the seed, answer the following 7 quiz questions ...", THREAD, undefined, {
      answer: answer("1 c) 2 a) 3 d) 4 a) 5 b) 6 d) and 7 a)", THREAD),
    }),
  ],
});

Every hint here is the author talking: the rules, the formatting example, the address type, the credit to Ian Coleman. The answer key hangs off the first hint as its answer, because that's where it was published, in a comment written after the money was gone. A hint says what was said and who said it. It never says whether it was right.

Why the key carries both halves

entropy is the SHA-256 of the answer sentences. seed is the phrase that hex turns into, plus the path it's read at. Keep both and the record shows its derivation instead of just claiming a result, and verify() reruns the second half on every check.

Where the address comes from

The thread never printed it

Worth saying out loud, because everything else in this dataset works the other way around. The post has no address and no txid. Someone asked for a signed message to prove the money was real, and got told that trusting a stranger is part of the fun.

What the author did publish, once the wallet was empty, is the answer key and the exact recipe: hash the seven sentences, paste the hex into Coleman's tool, take the first address. Run it and you land on 1GNrvamE9WP4DL6hTicWy1aoqCUwFM2Jbz. The chain does the rest without any help from us: 7,000,000 sats in at 09:45:02 UTC on April 5, 2019, everything out at 14:52:36 that afternoon. Right amount, right day, one funding and one spend. Either it's the quiz wallet or it's a hell of a coincidence.

Five hours, not ten minutes

The author hoped the wallet would fall faster than a block gets mined. It took 5h 7m, with live commentary the whole way: "Still not swept after 50 minutes. Definitely taking longer than average block."

The winner never posted. The sweep moved 0.0696808 BTC to a P2SH address and said nothing at all.

Is the birthday quiz solved?

Yes, and verify() says verified instead of taking the status on trust. The phrase and the path derive the address on the record, and the public key the sweep exposed matches its hash160. solveTime is 18,454 seconds, which is just the gap between the two transactions.

A singleton id, no name segment

satoshi_birthday_quiz is the whole identifier, like gsmg, bitaps, mineshop and movie_enigma. One puzzle, one key, no slash.

The birthday quiz record

satoshi_birthday_quiz	solved	0.07 BTC	1GNrvamE9WP4DL6hTicWy1aoqCUwFM2Jbz
chain: bitcoin  address kind: p2pkh
hash160: a8ac4bd83f5946f7e7b2452c1a9f28eba2bd13d2
public key: 02a3fdb91b1ad15a52e41be79bab912ac993d573ac015a7d27fc01ba61a9ff53fd (compressed)
private key: another blush custom lucky brisk sugar estate dinosaur walnut grab drill toddler street series retreat smile barrel cart grunt frequent helmet lake engine solve (seed phrase)
derivation path: m/44'/0'/0'/0/0
entropy: 098310da4251c5b19359f3f6cca90bf1bd6f882e066512c4619cae56aef9529e from https://www.reddit.com/r/Bitcoin/comments/b9peum/satoshi_birthday_7_million_quiz/ (SHA-256 of the seven answer sentences, joined by single spaces)
started: 2019-04-05 09:45:02
solved: 2019-04-05 14:52:36 (5h 7m)
transactions: 2
	funding	2019-04-05 09:45:02	0.07 BTC	25816457b40bf92fff53c39d5b4e2916f5fb6d471fe1afda1c2ed7da28607949
	claim	2019-04-05 14:52:36	0.0696808 BTC	f8fa32a473e2ef6da1f3a77366033512159df2db045eb0ba27c7acfe70466bd0
claim: https://blockstream.info/tx/f8fa32a473e2ef6da1f3a77366033512159df2db045eb0ba27c7acfe70466bd0
hints: 5
	official	-	To find the seed, answer the following 7 quiz questions (multiple choice). The SHA 256 hash of all correct answers combined is the wallet seed. Insert one space between answers.	source: https://www.reddit.com/r/Bitcoin/comments/b9peum/satoshi_birthday_7_million_quiz/	answer: 1 c) 2 a) 3 d) 4 a) 5 b) 6 d) and 7 a)	answer source: https://www.reddit.com/r/Bitcoin/comments/b9peum/satoshi_birthday_7_million_quiz/
	official	-	For example, if you chose d) at question 1 and c) at question 2, you would enter "There were were only two posts about price on the Bitcoin subreddit. Franklin D. Roosevelt required all American citizens by executive order 6102 to deliver all of their gold at the fixed price of $20.67 before May 1st." (leaving out the leading d) and c)).	source: https://www.reddit.com/r/Bitcoin/comments/b9peum/satoshi_birthday_7_million_quiz/
	official	-	There is only one seed. Use the seven sentences, seperated by one space and generate one hash and one only from that.	source: https://www.reddit.com/r/Bitcoin/comments/b9peum/satoshi_birthday_7_million_quiz/
	official	-	Legacy Bitcoin address starting with 1,	source: https://www.reddit.com/r/Bitcoin/comments/b9peum/satoshi_birthday_7_million_quiz/
	official	-	Thanks to Ian Coleman for the tool at iancoleman.io/bip39/, which I used to derive the brain wallet from the hash of the correct answer.	source: https://www.reddit.com/r/Bitcoin/comments/b9peum/satoshi_birthday_7_million_quiz/
explorer: https://blockstream.info/address/1GNrvamE9WP4DL6hTicWy1aoqCUwFM2Jbz
source: https://www.reddit.com/r/Bitcoin/comments/b9peum/satoshi_birthday_7_million_quiz/

{
  "id": "satoshi_birthday_quiz",
  "chain": "bitcoin",
  "address": {
    "value": "1GNrvamE9WP4DL6hTicWy1aoqCUwFM2Jbz",
    "kind": "p2pkh",
    "hash160": "a8ac4bd83f5946f7e7b2452c1a9f28eba2bd13d2"
  },
  "status": "solved",
  "pubkey": {
    "value": "02a3fdb91b1ad15a52e41be79bab912ac993d573ac015a7d27fc01ba61a9ff53fd",
    "format": "compressed"
  },
  "key": {
    "seed": {
      "phrase": "another blush custom lucky brisk sugar estate dinosaur walnut grab drill toddler street series retreat smile barrel cart grunt frequent helmet lake engine solve",
      "path": "m/44'/0'/0'/0/0",
      "entropy": {
        "hash": "098310da4251c5b19359f3f6cca90bf1bd6f882e066512c4619cae56aef9529e",
        "source": {
          "url": "https://www.reddit.com/r/Bitcoin/comments/b9peum/satoshi_birthday_7_million_quiz/",
          "description": "SHA-256 of the seven answer sentences, joined by single spaces"
        }
      }
    }
  },
  "prize": 0.07,
  "start_date": "2019-04-05 09:45:02",
  "solve_date": "2019-04-05 14:52:36",
  "solve_time": 18454,
  "source_url": "https://www.reddit.com/r/Bitcoin/comments/b9peum/satoshi_birthday_7_million_quiz/",
  "transactions": [
    {
      "tx_type": "funding",
      "txid": "25816457b40bf92fff53c39d5b4e2916f5fb6d471fe1afda1c2ed7da28607949",
      "date": "2019-04-05 09:45:02",
      "amount": 0.07
    },
    {
      "tx_type": "claim",
      "txid": "f8fa32a473e2ef6da1f3a77366033512159df2db045eb0ba27c7acfe70466bd0",
      "date": "2019-04-05 14:52:36",
      "amount": 0.0696808
    }
  ],
  "hints": [
    {
      "kind": "official",
      "text": "To find the seed, answer the following 7 quiz questions (multiple choice). The SHA 256 hash of all correct answers combined is the wallet seed. Insert one space between answers.",
      "source": "https://www.reddit.com/r/Bitcoin/comments/b9peum/satoshi_birthday_7_million_quiz/",
      "answer": {
        "text": "1 c) 2 a) 3 d) 4 a) 5 b) 6 d) and 7 a)",
        "source": "https://www.reddit.com/r/Bitcoin/comments/b9peum/satoshi_birthday_7_million_quiz/"
      }
    },
    {
      "kind": "official",
      "text": "For example, if you chose d) at question 1 and c) at question 2, you would enter \"There were were only two posts about price on the Bitcoin subreddit. Franklin D. Roosevelt required all American citizens by executive order 6102 to deliver all of their gold at the fixed price of $20.67 before May 1st.\" (leaving out the leading d) and c)).",
      "source": "https://www.reddit.com/r/Bitcoin/comments/b9peum/satoshi_birthday_7_million_quiz/"
    },
    {
      "kind": "official",
      "text": "There is only one seed. Use the seven sentences, seperated by one space and generate one hash and one only from that.",
      "source": "https://www.reddit.com/r/Bitcoin/comments/b9peum/satoshi_birthday_7_million_quiz/"
    },
    {
      "kind": "official",
      "text": "Legacy Bitcoin address starting with 1,",
      "source": "https://www.reddit.com/r/Bitcoin/comments/b9peum/satoshi_birthday_7_million_quiz/"
    },
    {
      "kind": "official",
      "text": "Thanks to Ian Coleman for the tool at iancoleman.io/bip39/, which I used to derive the brain wallet from the hash of the correct answer.",
      "source": "https://www.reddit.com/r/Bitcoin/comments/b9peum/satoshi_birthday_7_million_quiz/"
    }
  ]
}