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All Bitcoin private keys are on this website

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Re: All Bitcoin private keys are on this website

#91

Post by terrahashing »

tromp wrote: post #19
frisco wrote: post #2

This raises a really interesting question. Though it’s essentially impossible to figure out the key for any given wallet… if you download the blockchain and generate private keys as fast as you can, how often do you find one that has a balance? Will there just be some ongoing very low but decidedly nonzero risk of all of your assets vanishing some day if you’re not using multisig?

If you check 1 billion addresses a second, and there are 100 million addresses with a balance, then it would take on average roughly (2^256 / 10^8) * 10^-9 seconds, which is 36717430630808027468154168254911183362909051 billion years. EDIT: Only 463439129036942 billion years, taking into account that there are effectively only 2^160 addresses.

Hashing hardware capability is typically measured in trillions per second (TH/s) so the math might be better using trillion instead of billion. As I understand it, the rental cost of 1 PH/s (which I think is one-thousand-trillion?) is about $10/hour. From that I think you could work out an actual cost to generate a collision!

Re: All Bitcoin private keys are on this website

#92

Post by kosinus »

HPsquared wrote: post #53
theden wrote: post #26

It's like passively playing the world's worst lottery in terms of odds, but hundreds of thousands of times every second. It's fun but the odds are astronomically low. I have a script[1] that generates a pub+private key and checks against a massive file of addresses with BTC[2]. The list of addresses is loaded in memory as a python `set` so checking is O(1), but I feel like optimisations at increasing the rate are fut…

That's what mining is too, basically. It's just that a mining rig can "buy a lot more tickets".

Make me wonder, at what point does brute forcing private keys become more lucrative than mining?

Re: All Bitcoin private keys are on this website

#93

Post by Ensorceled »

2-718-281-828 wrote: post #74
lordnacho wrote: post #49

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How will you test the theory? It would be easy to just not sweep small amounts. Then when someone checks a wallet with a large amount, joink!

what would be the incentive for trying a second time with another wallet?

I think you are missing how this would work. The scammer wouldn't scoop up the proceeds if it was a small account you were looking up, only if it was a whale. This is to prevent someone from figuring out it was a scam with a small account and only gain a few dollars from the scam.

Re: All Bitcoin private keys are on this website

#95

Post by tgv »

alibarber wrote: post #90
wirelesspotat wrote: post #64

Soo what happens if you're incredibly lucky and stumble across the private key for an active wallet? If you transfer the funds out, isn't that just theft? Is "guessing" a private key any different from guessing someone's bank details?

If you guess someone’s bank details and steal their money, in many jurisdictions the account owner would have some recourse against the bank and is likely to be made whole (not an easy or enjoyable process I’ll admit) - so I guess that’s one key difference.

Yeah, it's the bank you would be stealing from, through fraud (impersonation, I guess). But Bitcoin is decentralized, so you wouldn't be stealing from anyone?

Re: All Bitcoin private keys are on this website

#96

Post by quickthrower2 »

andy_ppp wrote: post #32
sdan wrote: post #13

Earlier quoted context omitted.

its like asking if you had a rocketship that traveled at the speed of light, how long until you find earth given you're on some random galaxy

Not really because if you are travelling at the speed of light time isn't passing...

It is for earth though, which might be swallowed up by the sun at the spacetime you arrive.

Re: All Bitcoin private keys are on this website

#98

Post by folli »

wirelesspotat wrote: post #64

Soo what happens if you're incredibly lucky and stumble across the private key for an active wallet? If you transfer the funds out, isn't that just theft? Is "guessing" a private key any different from guessing someone's bank details?

In a decentralized system, 'theft' is only a moral construct, not a legal one. And who will enforce any repercussions?

Re: All Bitcoin private keys are on this website

#99

Post by s5300 »

bspammer wrote: post #78
theden wrote: post #26

It's like passively playing the world's worst lottery in terms of odds, but hundreds of thousands of times every second. It's fun but the odds are astronomically low. I have a script[1] that generates a pub+private key and checks against a massive file of addresses with BTC[2]. The list of addresses is loaded in memory as a python `set` so checking is O(1), but I feel like optimisations at increasing the rate are fut…

This is a rare care where "astronomically low" is actually underselling how unlikely something is.

I mean, I found 10 used wallets not within 1000 pages of the first nor last page of his website in roughly 5 minutes.

I’m fully aware behind the math of finding a wallet actually holding anything… but I was fairly weirded out to come across 10 wallets that quickly. Most had their last txn out roughly 2019.

Re: All Bitcoin private keys are on this website

#100

Post by codeflo »

5e92cb50239222b wrote: post #62
Tuna-Fish wrote: post #29

Earlier quoted context omitted.

... not even close. 2^256 is a very large number. If you could build a computer that required a single atom, and could test the balance of a single account in a single nanosecond, and then converted the entirety of the earth into such computers, it would take ~2.8 million years for you to check 0.01% of all accounts. Brute-forcing modern cryptography isn't something that can happen. The magnitude of 2^256 is close to…

> The magnitude of 2^256 is close to the count of atoms in the entire observable universe. I've always heard that even 2¹²⁸ is significantly larger than that number (which is closer to 2⁸⁰). This page seems to support that: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Observable_universe#Matter_con...

Look more carefully, the estimation according to Wikipedia is 10^80, which is roughly 2^266.

(BTW, when converting 10^x to 2^x, times 3 is what I use for very rough back of the envelope estimations. Times 10/3 is actually almost precise, as log2(10) = 3.32…)

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