There's Money Still to Win in the 310 Bitcoin Challenge

Over a million dollars'-worth of bitcoin was hidden in a picture - and there's still some left to be found.

Called the 310 BTC Bitcoin Challenge, a pseudonymous user going by the name "Pip" stashed a total of 310.61 BTC into four digital wallets earlier this month - with the recovery code for unlocking each wallet decipherable through careful investigation of a single black-and-white image.

Similar to the 310 BTC Bitcoin Challenge, enticing users to find bounties of bitcoin concealed within a computer-generated image, one of Driscoll's puzzles took more than two years to solve.

Within eight days of the challenge being released, three of the four wallets were successfully unlocked and emptied - this including the grand prize allotment of 310 BTC. Shocked at how quickly the funds were moved, Pip posted on Reddit, "I'm very surprised and impressed at the same time. For my next challenge, I can clearly beef up overall complexity."

As most bitcoin enthusiasts will know, the possible words that make up these seed phrases are compiled in multi-language lists found on Github repositories of bitcoin improvement proposals.

In order to unlock the remaining bitcoin wallet, challenge participants will likely have to put together the correct combination of words to compose a bitcoin seed phrase relying upon one or more of these Github word lists.

Challenge participants have leveraged an open-source software known as OpenSSL, or the Open Secure Sockets Layer, to decrypt part of the challenge solutions.

The unique code base and commands of OpenSSL able to encrypt web communications has also been used to similarly encrypt digital wallet codes as part of Pip's bitcoin challenge.

Knowing all this, the remaining task of deciphering the last piece to the 310 BTC Bitcoin Challenge is most likely of mixture of these techniques.

310 BTC Bitcoin Challenge PNG via the challenge website.