NEEDLESPACE

#74

Unsolved7.4 BTC

Still unsolved, and the public key is not known either — so the only approach is generating keys through the interval one at a time and comparing addresses. There are 273 keys in the interval, so sweeping all of it costs that many attempts (on average, half).

Address

1FWGcVDK3JGzCC3WtkYetULPszMaK2Jksv

mempool.space
Key range (hex)

0x2000000000000000000 ~ 0x3ffffffffffffffffff

Interval size

2^73 = 9.4×10^21

Balance

7.40004977 BTC · 6 tx

snapshot from 2026-08-23

Method of attack
Address brute force
work ≈ 9.4×10^21 (2^73)
Browser (JS, 1 thread)the search tool on this site1.7×10^10 years — 1.2× the age of the universe
CPU · keyhunt, 8 threads37,410,691 years
CPU · keyhunt, 16 threads18,705,345 years
GTX 10601,496,428 years
RTX 3070374,107 years
RTX 3090199,524 years
RTX 4090119,714 years
RTX 509074,821 years
RTX 4090 × 1011,971 years
RTX 4090 × 1001,197 years
RTX 4090 × 1,000the scale of a large pool120 years
All approximate. Implementation, clocks and target count move these by multiples, so read the order of magnitude and nothing finer. The calculator lets you put your own rate in.
Finding it is not the same as keeping it

A transaction moving puzzle funds carries the public key and the signature. The moment it reaches the mempool, bots take the same coins with a higher fee. That is exactly how #66 and #69 were lost. How to prevent it

Doing it

How to actually run this puzzle

Recommended: BitCrack (GPU)

With no public key there is nothing to do but generate addresses one at a time and compare. BitCrack does that on the GPU. On NVIDIA that means the CUDA build, cuBitCrack.

0. Build (Linux · CUDA)
git clone https://github.com/brichard19/BitCrack
cd BitCrack
make BUILD_CUDA=1
# On Windows, open BitCrack.sln in Visual Studio and build the cuKeyFinder project
# to get cuBitCrack.exe. macOS is not supported.
Run
./cuBitCrack -d 0 -b 288 -t 256 -p 1024 -c --keyspace 2000000000000000000:3ffffffffffffffffff --continue progress-74.txt -o found-74.txt 1FWGcVDK3JGzCC3WtkYetULPszMaK2Jksv
Watch out for
  • The best values for -b/-t/-p differ per GPU. Run it once at the defaults, look at the rate, then adjust.
  • Always include --continue. It keeps your position across restarts.
  • To split across machines, turn on “split the work” above. --share divides the range without overlap.
  • This shard covers 2000000000000000000 ~ 3ffffffffffffffffff.
Other options

CPU only. Handles both addresses and public keys, and is the easiest to install — good for learning and for checking your setup.

Kangaroonot usable

This puzzle's public key is not exposed. There is no discrete logarithm to solve.

A reality check

On a single RTX 4090 this takes 119,714 years. That is not “eventually”; in most cases it means “no”. Doing it anyway means accumulating GPUs or joining a pool.