Satoshi's Treasure is a $1m Bitcoin hunt

Despite its questionable environmental impact and notorious economic instability, Bitcoin is still alive and kicking. Now, Bitcoin’s involved in the form of an extremely lucrative AR game/treasure hunt: Satoshi’s Treasure. Participants can compete individually or in teams for the ultimate prize pot of US$1 million of Bitcoin, but the likelihood of winning by yourself seems pretty improbable.

The game has set off a wave of ambitious treasure-hunters across the world, and they’ve been combing both the web and the physical world for clues. Said clues consist of hidden QR codes, source codes, and secret links embedded in GIFs. To date, five clues have been released.

The ultimate goal of the hunt? Find and reassemble a key that’s been split into 1,000 fragments, although only 400 fragments are needed to unlock the treasure via “Shamir’s spell of recombination.” The “spell” is supposedly named after noted Israeli cryptographer Adi Shamir, a man famous for developing an algorithm for secret sharing — in itself, a potential clue to the final pieces of the puzzle.

Satoshi’s Treasure has been going on for two weeks already, but things took a new turn when a generous developer decided to help participants co-operate. The man in question — a lightning-fast hunter named John Cantrell — snapped up the first three keys within minutes, all from the comfort of his own home, and posted a full walkthrough of his methods on Github. For the greater good, Cantrell created a special Discord plugin to help teams coordinate their hunting efforts more efficiently. However, hunters can’t rely on a keyboard jockey strategy, as aspiring winners will eventually have to leave the house and travel the world to perform “feats of strength.”

The game itself is the brainchild of Primitive Ventures, a crypto investment firm that was inspired by the plot of Ready Player One. Their intention is to spread awareness of Bitcoin and cryptocurrency through engaging and accessible puzzles, which don’t require any special crypto knowledge to solve. The puzzles are a mix of online and offline problems — often involving logic or maths — that yield a key fragment.

The game also takes inspiration from geocaching, a popular but niche hobby that involves hiding containers in certain random spots and leaving clues for fellow hunters via GPS. Not unlike trivia night at a bar, the chances of winning are increased if you have a group with different focuses or specialised knowledge, which has led to people forming remote clans and teams across the world.

Dovey Wan, one of Primitive Ventures’ founders, tweeted that the game difficulty will increase as treasure hunters get closer and closer to unlocking the treasure. Wan also revealed that the hunt will incorporate smaller “side quests,” some of which will have their own prizes, and also that the ultimate US$1 million amount could change (the number of tokens is already set).

Of course, there’s also the endgame — once a team has all the shards, how can they trust each other to put everything together? In an interview with TNW, Cantrell said, “Teams could give all key shares they find to a trusted leader, but as soon as they have 400 shares, the leader could just steal the money for himself.”

Savage.

Taking a stab at Satoshi’s Treasure? We’d love to hear from you! Email us at alexisong@asiaone.com or ilyas@asiaone.com.