Opus5/low can do CryptoNote base58 decoding toolless, in working memory alone

A Bluesky post from Jerome Leclanche lit up the timeline with a very online flex: Anthropic’s Claude, specifically Opus 5 on low thinking, apparently decoded a CryptoNote-style base58 string without tools and just kept the whole thing in working memory. In plain English: the AI did a fiddly code-conversion task in its “head,” and that was presented as a big deal.

But the real fireworks came from the peanut gallery, where the mood was less “wow, genius” and more “isn’t this what computers are supposed to do?” One of the sharpest replies came from daveguy, who basically rolled their eyes and compared it to a glorified character swap, then delivered the killer punchline: “How many r’s in strawberry is a more difficult question.” Ouch. That instantly turned the thread from a victory lap into a classic internet dogpile, with readers joking that if the bot wants applause, maybe it should try ROT13 next — the internet’s favorite “baby’s first code trick.”

Another camp wasn’t exactly shocked either, arguing this kind of encoding shows up all over crypto, file-sharing, and software projects, so of course an AI trained on mountains of code would likely recognize it. Translation: some saw brilliance, others saw a memorized party trick. The drama here isn’t just whether the AI pulled it off — it’s whether anyone should be impressed at all.