Post
Topic
Board Bitcoin Discussion
Re: Bitcoin puzzle transaction ~32 BTC prize to who solves it
by
kTimesG
on 24/05/2025, 10:50:01 UTC
Let’s assume we know the private key k lies within a limited range:

k ∈ [-1000, +1000] mod N
...
That’s 1 bit of information recovered via curve symmetry and limited search space.
That’s useful:

In biased brute-force attacks

This only works when you're trying to find the private key of a known public key. For address puzzles, you can't shift the search interval. And for public key puzzles, brute-force is not used because exponentially faster algorithms exist (and some already take advantage of the curve symmetry).