Today I was starting to think, that no correct answer to my quiz will ever be seen.
Because less than 30 hours was left (before the post with my task expires), and not many new attempts were coming in. But about 6 hours ago my hopes to save 44 Leo was ruined, by a new LeoFinance member @cryptosneeze
He posted exactly what I was asking - the ETH address private key 0x610c8b06eac7fbd9aeb88b500fd6892b038cc60fc40e9381184130e6893fb600
CONGRATULATIONS !
Your 44 Leo been already delivered, @cryptosneeze . Bravo !
Not let me explain a bit, why I was keep saying, that this task is not very complicated, has no passwords or encryption, and can be solved with a few mouse copy-paste moves.
Everyone who has ever learned what the HD (Hierarchical Deterministic) wallets are, most likely know the great tools made by IAN COLEMAN, and his site for "Mnemonic Code Converter", https://iancoleman.io/bip39/
If you go there and try to play with it, generating never repeating 24 word mnemonic seeds, you can find all the corresponding public and private addresses on that site. 24 words are used only for convenience of non-tech people. But at the very root - it is always a very very very large random binary number, represented in the form of long string of "ones and zeros". To see them, you must select "show entropy details" :
Because high ENTROPY is all what matters for security in a large random number
And once you select it, the view instantly changes into this:
[pic.2]
Notice that large area "A" of zeros and ones?
No matter how many times you generate new 24 word seed, it always looks pretty much the same. Always.
23 groups of 11 digits, (used to select the first 23 words in your seed, and extra three bits for checksum and mastering the last 24th word.
The picture is always the same. 253 + 3, or ((23x11) + 3)
Now compare this to the picture of my quiz, in that lost "paper wallet"? Notice some similarities?
Yes ! It looks like reversed. And this was the KEY MOMENT !
My posted "ones and zeros" are just a REVERSED binary seed string.
I expected that anyone who ever used IAN COLLEMAN's tool, will easy recognize this. The rest is "no brainer", just plain copy-paste's
There are many online tools for text reversing. One of them I used was this
https://www.browserling.com/tools/text-reverse
So here comes the time of your first COPY-PASTE (noticed the given plain text version in my initial post?)
COPY:
001 01010111000 10011100011 10100101010
11001110111 01100101000 10011100001 00011001111
10001000010 10100010001 11011001101 01011101001
11010101001 10100011011 01001111100 01111101010
00110101011 01000001100 11111000000 00110001011
11110111111 10110001000 01110101000 01110110111
PASTE in the above reversing tool and you have:
11101101110 00010101110 00010001101 11111101111
11010001100 00000011111 00110000010 11010101100
01010111110 00111110010 11011000101 10010101011
10010111010 10110011011 10001000101 01000010001
11110011000 10000111001 00010100110 11101110011
01010100101 11000111001 00011101010 100
Now, how to use it?
There is no way how to paste it into IAN COLEMAN's tool. No binary number change allowed (section "A")
But... you can change the HEXADECIMAL form of it, which is shown named as ENTROPY in section "B" of pic.2
So time now for second copy-paste.
Going to one of numerous BIB-2-HEX online converters, like this:
https://www.binaryhexconverter.com/binary-to-hex-converter
Paste the last reversed string, and we get this:
EDC2B846FEFD1807CC16AC57C7CB62CAB97566E22A11F310E45377354B8E4754
Looks like a HEX type number, right?
Lets make the THIRD COPY-PASTE, and paste this HEX number in the "B" space of IAN COLEMAN'S site:
So we are almost at the finish. Section "C" has already the valid 24 words for our HD wallet.
All we have to do, is scroll down to the area where the addresses and private keys are listed
(make sure you have selected ETH as a proper coin type, like this)
Scroll down more, and see the answer, the Privkey of the required ETH address:
Time for the last, 4th copy-paste, into comment section of the QUIZ, on LeoFinance. 😃
IMPOTANT NOTE: Never EVER use this method for securing your "paper wallets". Not even for funds worth $10 or less.
Initially, I was expecting to get the right answer to this challenge in the first 24 hours, once I posted it.
For someone with the right knowledge ( of after reading this now) - you crypto coins will be gone in less than a minute.
THREE COPY-PASTES !