An unidentified Bitcoin user embedded a 255-byte message in block 963,629 on Aug. 22, announcing a wallet puzzle whose private-key material was allegedly derived from Satoshi Nakamoto's Genesis Block. Galaxy Research identified the transaction the following day.
A Puzzle Built From the Genesis Block
The transaction contains a human-readable message placed in an OP_RETURN output. Its author said they created a Bitcoin puzzle using information contained in the Genesis Block created by Satoshi to generate the wallet. The creator added that the wallet's entropy was extremely low and claimed no private backup was necessary because everything needed was already in the Genesis Block.
Entropy refers to the randomness used when creating private keys. A secure wallet draws from a sufficiently large and unpredictable set of possible values. A wallet generated from well-known public data can become vulnerable if an attacker can reproduce the exact selection, ordering, and transformation process.
The On-Chain Message
The transaction was 500 bytes and paid a miner fee of 250 satoshis, making the on-chain message inexpensive to publish. The 255-byte payload represented more than half the transaction's raw size. Galaxy Research characterized it as an oversized OP_RETURN, referring to its unusual size compared with ordinary data outputs.
OP_RETURN allows users to create provably unspendable outputs carrying arbitrary information. Once confirmed, the puzzle text became part of Bitcoin's permanent transaction history. However, embedding a claim on-chain proves that the message existed by that time — it does not prove that every statement inside it is accurate.
What the Genesis Block Contains
Satoshi mined Bitcoin's Genesis Block, also called block zero, on Jan. 3, 2009. Its hash is well-documented, and the block contains a timestamp, nonce, Merkle root, public key, and the famous newspaper headline: The Times 03/Jan/2009 Chancellor on brink of second bailout for banks.
Any of those values could form part of the puzzle's key-generation process. The public availability of these values means solvers can reproduce them, but they still need to identify which information the creator selected and how it was processed.
Has Anyone Solved It?
No verified evidence available at publication time showed that anyone had deciphered the puzzle or moved its advertised reward. Galaxy Research had not identified the author or published a verified solution when it disclosed the transaction.
The next verifiable development would be an outgoing transaction signed by the puzzle wallet's private key. Such a movement could show that someone derived the correct key, although an apparent solution could also come from the original creator. Until then, the event remains a newly published Bitcoin puzzle built around public Genesis Block data.
