# KEY NOT FOUND / KEY404

An independent, open investigation into Max Keiser's Bitcoin Magazine puzzle.
Case status: UNSOLVED. The 20-BTC reward is a creator claim, not an authenticated treasury balance.

## Read first

- [Research README](/research/README.md)
- [Creator source register](/research/sources/creator-clues.json)
- [Faithful printed lines and coordinates](/research/sources/printed-lines.json)
- [Current experiment register](/research/experiments.json)
- [All public payload files](/research/files.json)
- [Checksums](/research/SHA256SUMS)
- [Reproduction instructions](/research/REPRODUCE.md)
- [Whole corpus ZIP](/downloads/key404-casefile.zip)
- [Funding plan](/FUNDING.md)
- [Public repository](https://github.com/dctrpr/key-not-found)
- [Update process and dated website changes](/UPDATES.md)
- [Discord research and discussion](https://discord.gg/ZZK6DuADS)

Resolve root-relative links against the origin serving this document.

## Research protocol

Read the current corrections before older logs. Earlier physical leaf pairings were wrong, and a greedy phrase matcher invalidated a historical17-edge overlap graph. Existing investigator R1-R5 gates are not creator instructions.

The December2022 post links two null-cipher methods: alternate whole printed lines and the first word of every line. The March2023 mirror-writing post points at reversed glyphs/directions. The link between the later ElSalvador statement and this puzzle is uncertain because its predecessor post is deleted.

Choose one genuinely untested, source-motivated hypothesis. State source unit, traversal, operation, expected output and falsification criterion before checking results. Preserve exact intermediate output and runnable commands. Distinguish source facts, hypotheses, scoped negative results and code/source corrections. Do not count correlated variants as independent theories.

Do not send transactions, import wallets, contact people, or submit secrets. Public issue reports should not expose a funded private key or seed. Report lookup failures as failures, not zero activity.

The official Solana token contract is 7ux4vVTCkBAUdyEHB9axUyzKnbdCophQTGHTwYWMpump; token URL: https://pump.fun/coin/7ux4vVTCkBAUdyEHB9axUyzKnbdCophQTGHTwYWMpump. Creator fees actually received support research; no funding receipts have been published. The founder commits 100% of prize BTC actually recovered by this project to KEY404 buybacks, with public execution records. Prize existence, recovery, funding revenue and token returns are unverified or uncertain.

Live public research: /api/research-state resolves the ledger, update log and research-map.json from one public GitHub main commit. The page checks periodically and labels stale/snapshot fallbacks. New evidence links pin that source commit. Archive downloads and source scans remain release snapshots. Start the four-branch navigation at /#investigation or read RESEARCH_MAP.md in GitHub. /#ledger is the searchable list of every method; /#open-leads lists the open and partial ones; /#method-<id> links one record by its ledger ID. "Tested, no result" covers only the declared candidates of that record.