THIS PAINTING IS worth $50,000 – or at least it was until today.
Created three years ago, it contains a secret code that gives access to an online wallet of Bitcoins worth $50,000 (or over €40,000).
Today that wallet was emptied, but the winner said they didn’t want their identity revealed.
According to the BBC, here’s where the magic code was hidden in the painting:
The puzzle encoded a string of binary – a series of zeroes and ones – in complicated rows of flames painted around the edge of the canvas.
The colour and shape of each flame determined a four-character chunk of the binary series, with a further part of the code represented by six ribbons of different lengths in the bottom right-hand corner.
After all of these codes had been worked out and linked together, the successful puzzle-solver was able to translate the full string of zeros and ones into a Bitcoin private key with the help of a simple computer programme.
The person behind the @coin_artist account on Twitter told Motherboard that the painting was partly inspired by a personal event, and partly in reference to William Shakespeare’s famous poem The Phoenix and the Turtle.
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