Quote from: pooya87 on March 21, 2020, 04:01:13 AM

so our initial guess that this is NOT a puzzle but instead a brute force attempt was correct.

Not only that, but the "clues" they released were not only useless, but actively led people in the wrong direction and away from the correct answer.

The first clue was this:

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The next step involves converting some words from the portrait, without I/O, into a 27-digit number

The actual solution was to convert the words "SatoshiNakamoto". Neither the word "Satoshi" nor "Nakamoto" appear anywhere in the portrait, and all the words which do appear in the portrait would obviously give the wrong solution.

If you look at some of the hints that were given on telegram: https://github.com/olalonde/phemex-puzzle/blob/master/CLUES.md#possible-hints-given-on-telegram

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Max said Paul was in the right direction after he said "we should find a way to convert BTC, XRP, ETH and Phemex to numbers.

We know now this is completely wrong.

Honestly, not only were there not enough clues to reasonable deduce the answer, and not only were there too many possibilities to simply brute force, but the clues and hints which were given out would make it impossible to solve if you followed them, not easier. The whole point of a giveaway like this is to actually give the funds away - they should have released more and more clues until someone claimed the prize, not deliberately obfuscate the answer and then shut the whole thing down without a winner.