Bobby Lee's Blog RSS

I’m sure many of you have heard of the expression “easy is hard.” What does it mean? Well, it refers to the fact that it’s hard to make something easy. That makes sense intuitively, because it truly does take a lot of smart, focused thinking and good design, to make something truly easy. Would you agree? Of all the companies and products out there, I think the Apple iPhone best captures the concept that to be “Easy is Hard.” As a hardcore Apple fan, I can confidently declare that the iPhone is truly the world’s easiest to use smartphone and...

We all know that Bitcoin uses a decentralized digital ledger called the blockchain to record and verify all of its transactions. The blockchain is actually a sequence of blocks, each being a virtual container storing a group of bitcoin transactions. These blocks are what the Bitcoin miners are constantly working to create. The mining machines worldwide are constantly making cryptographic calculations to securely confirm new transactions in a block. Once the correct calculation is found for a new block, it is mined successfully and confirmed by the whole Bitcoin network as being valid, with no double spends or other faulty...

Bitcoin prices just crossed $12,000 again, and even though this is not the first time, it feels dramatically different this time. The overall global macro situation and the heated crypto market makes it different. It brings back memories of Bitcoin’s price rising slowly exactly 4 years ago, in the fall of 2016.  I’ve been involved in Bitcoin since early 2011, so this is my tenth year now. Throughout the past 10 years, the price of Bitcoin has always been an important component of its story. Many people say that Bitcoin’s utility is the most important for this decentralized digital currency,...

Last week, I posted a hacking contest in which I asked you to hack my two Ballet REAL Bitcoin wallets, loaded with a combined value of over $21,000 in bitcoin (1.0 BTC on each wallet). I said that it’ll be very hard for anyone to try and steal those bitcoins, even though I’ve already provided the encrypted private key and the BIP38 decryption passphrase for each of the two wallets, respectively. The reason is that BIP38 is hard to hack. What about us, Ballet? Can we steal your funds? In practice, no, because in our manufacturing process, we don’t store...

Yesterday, Ballet announced that its total customer wallet deposits have reached USD $21 million of equivalent cryptocurrency. Today, I’m excited to share a $21,000 challenge with you: I want you to try and hack my own personal REAL Bitcoin wallets. I have loaded 2 wallets, each with 1.0 BTC, which is a combined value of over $21,000 at today’s prices. For one wallet (serial number AA009926), I have revealed the full encrypted private key underneath the silver sticker. If you can guess the corresponding BIP38 passphrase, then you can take my 1.0 BTC. Yes, give it a try! Here’s the...