It was a new day in Lapland! Well, sort of... it was still dark outside due to polar night, but our elf friend McJingles was well-rested and full of energy! Yesterday he learned all about how to make a transaction using Bitcoin::Crypto, but he forgot to prepare the private keys to be gifted by Santa. Elves may be very hard-working, but they are also forgetful!

He quickly came up with a plan: the private keys will probably be printed on lovely decorated Christmas gift cards. All he had to do is provide printable representations of the private keys and the other elves can do all the printing. McJingles decided it will for now be enough to print all the keys as those Wallet Import Format (WIF) things he had used before to get access to the initial 50 BTC. The standard output of the script can be redirected to a file with no additional effort.

use v5.36;
use Bitcoin::Crypto qw(btc_extprv);

# Ask for mnemonic and password. Keeping them in a file makes them much easier
# target for malware and hackers!
say 'Please provide the mnemonic and password, each in separate lines:';
my $mnemonic = readline STDIN;
my $password = readline STDIN;

# Remove the newline from readline
chomp $mnemonic;
chomp $password;

# recover a key from input
my $master_key = btc_extprv->from_mnemonic($mnemonic, $password);

# how many presents?
my $number_of_kids = 346;

# print all the keys in WIF format
foreach my $index (0 .. $number_of_kids - 1) {

  # same derivation scheme as before
  my $key = $master_key->derive_key_bip44(
    purpose => 84,
    account => 0,
    index => $index,
  )->get_basic_key;

  # print it to standard output
  say $key->to_wif;
}

This script was much more straightforward than the previous one! It was time to see if the key recovery worked:

        Please provide the mnemonic and password, each in separate lines:
        brown bulk hire culture capital hill trim turkey  gossip artefact door media argue basic execute slam minute try number daughter music gauge vocal wink
        Christmas
        L1pn6bRKUY1dMXg6XvURHNCrm9CDByFehQPHmnfTKQXCxRktUAqN
        L3dhFVe8BgjgGGbu2Rm72fcgyB3SgVZ2ee8fsoezSA47QxhDAng5
        L2TZEBZJ2yTb2JxcxbUippr3DBAkZopLFrXSGGZRRzfH78RFcTnj
        (...)

It worked indeed, but it was not yet clear whether the private keys were the correct ones. McJingles crafted a one-liner to test the first key he got:

        $ perl -MBitcoin::Crypto=btc_prv -e \
        'print btc_prv->from_wif("L1pn6bRKUY1dMXg6XvURHNCrm9CDByFehQPHmnfTKQXCxRktUAqN")->get_public_key->get_address'
        bc1qls9ffahaa5kezk0zvq2hh58nn6yfv8uehdq7dp

Something was wrong. That's not the address which was generated before! How is that possible? After thorough investigation McJingles found out he typed two spaces while providing the mnemonic for the program. A quick scan through Bitcoin::Crypto::Key::ExtPrivate's documentation has revealed that from_mnemonic method usage without the language argument is not only whitespace-sensitive but also doesn't check if the words exist in the dictionary. It is pretty unsafe to use it like that unless you nail it exactly right! He modified the script to add 'en' language as the last argument to from_mnemonic...

my $master_key = btc_extprv->from_mnemonic($mnemonic, $password, 'en');

... and then tried again, making the same mistake:

        Please provide the mnemonic and password, each in separate lines:
        brown bulk hire culture capital hill trim turkey  gossip artefact door media argue basic execute slam minute try number daughter music gauge vocal wink
        Christmas
        L4DrMfpZRp5P6szTGqWQHnYDBJaAwTRN8NHRkTM3Kc79U14wi5Li
        L3rpcJdvNynUCWWaQEEAXkS7FPpCrz1HnCiHT4VYcmm4oWct5Fd8
        KwzsywmntPwwnEMTbd9jw7wPjeM4PKx52KeSLU9cZ4o1Qx7AFyTD
        (...)

The output was different, but was it the right key this time?

        $ perl -MBitcoin::Crypto=btc_prv -e \
        'print btc_prv->from_wif("L4DrMfpZRp5P6szTGqWQHnYDBJaAwTRN8NHRkTM3Kc79U14wi5Li")->get_public_key->get_address'
        bc1qum6sd22rmsewwd75lzlynuve8wz0ah2uw2gltu

Yes, that's correct! This was the first address printed in the transaction dump yesterday. If he was able to obtain the same address then surely he will be able to move the coins. And so will the children! When they wake up in the morning and find the gift cards, they will have an option of keeping it or sweeping it. Sweeping is a function commonly found in mobile Bitcoin wallets and when used the coins will be transferred away to a different wallet. To spare the kids all the retyping of WIFs it's best to also provide a QR code, but that's a problem for another day (or another elf). If they don't sweep it the coins will still be spendable by Santa and his helpers, but it's safe to assume they would never steal a Christmas present back!

He ran the script again with output redirected to a file and e-mailed it to Santa. "Here Father Christmas, I made it!" - he typed in excitement. He added all the other elves as CC to the e-mail so they could start printing the gift cards. It was a job well done indeed.

Now the last question remains: will he remember to publish the transaction before the Silent Night? We are about to find out very, very soon.