Crypto VC Firm Paradigm Pays Nearly $1 Million for Solution to CIA's Unsolved Kryptos Sculpture Puzzle
Paradigm, a San Francisco-based crypto venture capital firm, paid nearly $1 million at auction for the solution to K4, the unsolved fourth panel of the Kryptos sculpture at CIA headquarters, along with the solution to a previously unrevealed fifth panel. The 1990 copper sculpture by artist Jim Sanborn has stumped professional and amateur cryptanalysts for decades, with three of its four panels solved but K4's 97 characters remaining uncracked. Paradigm is now opening the challenge to the public via a new website, charging $1 per submission and using a cryptographic hash function to verify correct answers without revealing the solution.
Kryptos, a copper S-curve sculpture installed outside CIA headquarters in Langley, Virginia in 1990, has long been one of cryptography's most famous unsolved puzzles. Artist Jim Sanborn, now 80, arranged the auction in 2025 partly to fund his retirement and partly to offload the burden of fielding thousands of incorrect—and increasingly AI-assisted—solution attempts. The winning bidder, Paradigm partner Dan Robinson, paid nearly $1 million for a lot that included sealed plaintext solutions to both K4 and an undisclosed fifth panel (K5), a miniature model of the sculpture, and archival ephemera, as shown in photographs of the purchased materials. Paradigm says it has not opened the sealed envelopes containing the answers, and will verify submissions by running them through the same hash function Sanborn used to encode the solution. A notable pre-auction complication arose when researchers Jarett Kobek and Richard Byrne discovered what appeared to be K4's plaintext inadvertently included in Sanborn's papers at the Smithsonian archives; they agreed not to publish it, and the Smithsonian subsequently restricted access. Sanborn has indicated that solving K4 will somehow make K5 solvable, and he has hinted he may embed the K5 ciphertext in one of his public projection artworks, leaving the puzzle world with yet another layer of mystery even as he formally passes stewardship to Paradigm.
What's missing
It remains unclear what legal or contractual protections prevent Kobek or Byrne from eventually publishing the K4 plaintext they reportedly found, beyond a stated personal commitment. Additionally, the mechanism by which solving K4 will make K5 'solvable' has not been explained by Sanborn or Paradigm.
How coverage differed
Both outlets covered the story from a broadly similar angle, but Wired provided significantly more narrative depth—including the Kobek/Byrne Smithsonian discovery, Sanborn's ambivalence about stepping back, and Paradigm's broader philosophy—while the Times framed it more concisely as a tech-world acquisition opening a public challenge.
What different sources said
They Bought a Famous Puzzle in Cryptography. Now They’re Opening It Up.
- WiredLeft
Crypto Guys Bought the Answer to the CIA’s Mysterious Kryptos Sculpture
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