The Bitcoin privacy project, Wasabi Wallet, along with 12 bitcoin pioneering projects and companies such as Blockstream, BTCPay and Trezor, are working together to organize a world treasure hunt for bitcoin called Hunting Sats. Over a full week starting on January 23rd, 2023, partners will be publicly revealing different seed words of a bitcoin wallet protecting millions of sats. Anybody is free to attempt to crack that bitcoin wallet and claim all of its sats.

Cracking a Bitcoin Wallet

For this game, brute-forcing a bitcoin wallet means finding the seed words and a passphrase, in this case, arranging them in the right order and using the resulting backup as a way to recover the wallet’s funds. There are many ways to achieve this and general knowledge about bitcoin wallets, script types, derivation paths, checksums, passphrases and BIP-39 seed words will be helpful. Each partner will be sharing their own seed word and the passphrase to the public in random order for anyone to attempt to guess the wallet backup. As more words are revealed, brute-forcing gets easier, so time is ticking as people from around the world compete to crack the wallet.

Without Anyone’s Permission

Shadowy super coders and sociopathic sat stacking anons from all over the Internet are welcome. From Guatemala to New York, Seoul or Dakar, anyone can participate without permission. This is bitcoin! Participants are welcome to join and brute-force a passphrase-protected 12-word seed backup with 3,454,811 sats on it (0.03454811 BTC). Participants from bitcoin communities can share tips, scripts and educational content to achieve this individually or as a group. There is only one rule for participants joining from all around the world: first come, first served. Crack the wallet, earn millions of sats; or more accurately, take what’s now rightfully yours before others do! Anybody is also welcome to send more sats to the bounty address as the game unfolds.

How Hunting Sats Works

  • A passphrase-protected 12-word (BIP39) bitcoin wallet was created
  • One bitcoin address was generated and 3,454,811 sats have been sent to it (bc1q7kw2uepv6hfffhhxx2vplkkpcwsslcw9hsupc6)
  • Each word from the wallet backup, including mnemonic seed words and a passphrase, were randomly distributed to the 12 Hunting Sats partners
  • The Wasabi Wallet Twitter account will announce the start of Hunting Sats on January 23rd, 2023
  • Each partner will randomly reveal their secret word on Twitter within a full week of the start using #HuntingSats.
  • As each word is shared by partners, participants will attempt to brute force the seed backup and ultimately claim the sats.
  • If no one successfully sweeps the wallet within a week, hints will be shared accordingly.

Visit HuntingSats.com

For all the general information regarding the contest, including updates about the words that have been revealed to the public.

Official Partners

There are 12 partner projects and companies who each have been trusted to share a random word from the wallet backup. All partners have bitcoin-only products and care deeply about security, privacy and Bitcoin education.

BTCPay – A self-hosted, open-source bitcoin payment processor. It’s secure, private, censorship-resistant and free.

Trezor – A hardware wallet providing advanced security for handling bitcoin.

Cryptosteel – The mother of all backups. A fireproof, shockproof and waterproof offline tool that you own to backup your bitcoin and passwords.

Blockstream – The global leader in bitcoin and timechain technology. They make financial markets more efficient by reducing reliance on trust.

Bull Bitcoin – World’s best non-custodial Bitcoin company. Buy, sell and pay bills with Bitcoin. Our Mission: Destroy Fiat.

Hodl Hodl – P2P bitcoin trading & lending platform that doesn’t hold funds.

Bitcoin Reserve – Easiest way to unlock the professional OTC buying and selling experience, without all of the hassle and high-trade minimums of traditional brokerage desks.

Coinkite – A leader in security and hardware manufacturer. Maker of some of the most iconic Bitcoin products, such as OPENDIME, COLDCARD, BLOCKCLOCK and more.

Swan Bitcoin – On a mission to inspire and educate 10 million new Bitcoiners. Start buying Bitcoin in 10 minutes or less. Services for HNWI, companies and financial advisors.

BTCTKVR – The home of insightful Bitcoin articles, podcasts, videos & music.

mempool.space – Explore the full bitcoin ecosystem and be your own explorer with The Mempool Open Source Project.

Wizardsardine – A team of bitcoiners with a passion for security. Our mission is to make bitcoiners sleep better at night. We focus on safety: preventing both theft and loss.

“Entropy is still a very alien concept for most people. When your money is at stake, you should spend some time to understand how it impacts security. Breaking a wallet without any info? No. Breaking a wallet when you find 6 of the words? Well, maybe. How many will the cracker need? 7? 8? Let’s see.” – Kevin Loaec, Co-Founder & CEO at Wizardsardine

“Gamification is a good way to educate users and that is what Hunting Sats is all about. On the one hand, it shows how brute force becomes more achievable if users reveal part of their seed – for example, if they expose it to cloud storage or split their recovery seed into parts. On the other hand, when users work responsibly with their seed and keep their private key in dedicated cold storage, the risk of cracking the wallet is practically zero. We’re excited to watch how the game will play out and looking forward to further cooperating with Wasabi Wallet.” – Jiří Kroulík, PR Manager at Trezor

“Brute-forcing Bitcoin wallet by playing around the seed phrase sounds like a fun game, but in fact, it is all about educating us on the delicate security that our private keys need to be attributed with. Understanding these basic concepts is one of the first steps towards self-sovereignty and self-custody. We are happy to be part of this initiative and cooperate with companies that share our values.” – Hodl Hodl

“Hands-on learning through fun games like Hunting Sats is a fantastic way for users to learn about seed phrase security and other benefits of self-custody. At Coinkite, we have been creating Bitcoin security & fun devices for over a decade. Today, we are excited to support Hunting Sats, a fun and engaging way to educate and for freedom-loving people.” – NVK, Co-Founder & CEO of Coinkite

“For years, we’ve made a constant effort to spread the word and educate about the need for financial self-sovereignty and best security practices for private key protection. Entering 2023, we’re happy to begin celebrating our tenth anniversary by joining this exciting event organized by Wasabi. Best of luck to all the contestants – may the hackiest hacker win!” – Team Cryptosteel

“As bitcoiners, we wanted to organize a fun game to start 2023 on a high note with projects and companies we respect and use every day. Bitcoin security and privacy are essential and we hope Hunting Sats can bring together bitcoiners who care about these principles.” – Thibaud Marechal, Contributor at Wasabi Wallet

If you have additional questions, please reach out to the Hunting Sats organizers on Twitter by DMs to @thibm_ or via email to [email protected]. Don’t forget to follow @wasabiwallet and all the partners on Twitter for the latest announcements and join the contest with #HuntingSats.

About Wasabi Wallet

Reclaim your privacy with Wasabi Wallet, a free and open-source bitcoin wallet with built-in coinjoins. Coinjoins are collaborative bitcoin transactions to enable cash-like privacy features for bitcoin in the era of digital surveillance. Download, verify and try Wasabi Wallet here.