I was looking at the history of BTCPuzzle, and it turns out that two wallets that solved the puzzles did not receive their award because it was “intercepted”.
I have no idea what this means or how it could possibly work. Here is the link where I saw this.
And here is the specific text:
2024-09-12
Puzzle #66 (6.6 BTC) was solved by 1Jvv4y (tx1) but the original spending transaction was replaced by bc1qpk (tx2) spending only 5.94 BTC. Finally, another address 15XVN6 took the rest of the prize: 0.66 BTC (tx3).
2025-02-21
Puzzle #67 (6.7 BTC) was solved by bc1qfk and the transaction was mined bypassing the public mempool to avoid interception as in the case of puzzle #66.
2025-04-06
Puzzle #68 (6.8 BTC) was solved by bc1qfw and the transaction was mined bypassing the public mempool to avoid interception as in the case of puzzle #66.
2025-04-30
Puzzle #69 (6.9 BTC) was solved by bc1qlp in less than one month, likely due to its position at the very beginning of the search range (0.72%). However, the original transaction (tx1) was publicly broadcast, leading to it being replaced multiple times (tx2, tx3). Ultimately, 15g7XH managed to steal the prize (tx4).
The idea of transactions being simply intercepted and rerouted is madness. Did the attackers very quickly re-compute the private key somehow, the moment the transaction entered the mempool? What the hell is going on here?
