[yorwba]

> And HN fell for it, hook line and sinker.

I don't see HN falling for anything, unless you mean this submission appearing on the front page. In which case I see someone showing how a lame cryptocurrency treasure hunt used cryptography badly, making the challenge easy to solve without waiting for hints to be provided.

The most interesting part for me is actually that dictionary attacks are easy enough that you can use a Ruby script to get it done in a few seconds.

[jakob223]

The flavor text provided by the organizers made it sound like they intended there to be an easier solution - that way you only need to visit a location in one of North America, Europe, or Asia to solve the first three keys.