Two French hackers used their computer skills to reconstruct a blurred-out code on TV and claim bitcoins worth $1,000 (£760).
Michel Sassano and Clement Storck had seen a meeting with business visionary Roger Ver on French TV.
Mr Ver had offered $1,000 to watchers - yet a QR code expected to assert the cash had been obscured out.
The couple broke down a little piece of the code that was obvious, in any case, and figured out how to get to the assets.
At the point when the France 2 channel communicate its meeting with Mr Ver not long ago, he guaranteed the cash - a little more than three Bitcoin Cash coins, worth $1,000 - to whichever watcher was speediest to check an on-screen QR code.
In any case, the code had been obscured out by France 2 - Mr Sassano trusts this is a result of French telecom directions that keep news programs from giving without end prizes.
"The procedure to interpret the private key from the minute we watched the show to when we entered it in the wallet took, I think, in the vicinity of 12 and 16 hours," Mr Sassano told the BBC.
He and Mr Storck have clarified the procedure in detail in a blog.
Their fortune relied upon a minute towards the finish of the TV section when a little bit of the QR code was really demonstrated unblurred..
The sharp looked at combine additionally saw that the highest point of the QR code and part of the key written in letters and numbers were likewise not obscured adequately, making them coherent with programming.
They could plot what they knew without a doubt about the code's structure - adding up to approximately 33% of it - in a spreadsheet.
From that point, the twosome worked out as much as they could about the missing parts, in view of their insight into how QR codes are outlined.
At last, they figured that there were around 2.1 million conceivable last mixes.
"We got down to two legitimate keys that would coordinate bitcoin private keys," says Mr Sassano.
One of these turned out to be the appropriate response they were searching for.
They exchanged the cash on 17 October - an online bitcoin wallet demonstrates the exchange.
"The cash is the cherry on the cake however the most energizing was the point at which we found the private key and the calculation revealed to us this was the one," says Mr Sassano, including that he has not yet pulled back the cash.
Roger Ver portrayed the work as "astounding".
"With no data at all they could remake the private key and claim the assets," he says.
"On the off chance that you have sufficient energy to peruse the blog it's totally unbelievable."
He likewise uncovers that he has been "immersed" with messages from watchers who watched the program and needed to know whether he kept a duplicate of the QR code - however he had not.
"I erased it," he clarifies. "Presently I have a comment the French individuals [who reached me] - some person managed to guarantee it."
The BBC has reached France 2 for input.
