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All Bitcoin private keys are on this website

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311–320 of 398 posts

Re: All Bitcoin private keys are on this website

#312

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The balance of your bank account is similarly “information”. But since everyone places value on that information, it’s valuable. And these days, they way society is using traditional currency is become less tangible all the time. It’s is 100% possible to live life with never touching physical currency. Get paid via direct deposit, credit cards for your daily expenses, ACH your housing bill and credit card expenses. A…

The key difference is that one of these things has the backing and approval of recognized governments who also control law enforcement, while the other is just some guys on the internet. I'm not so sure "finding a pre-existing bitcoin wallet I can claim, and doing so" is really any different than "generating hashes until the blockchain hands me a prize".

That's not an argument. In any case, more and more governments are now recognizing crypto as something real, and are coming onboard. E.g. most recently Dubai.

Re: All Bitcoin private keys are on this website

#313
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…

Have you explored the space of "poorly generated keys"? I assume someone has screwed up their key generation at some point in a predictable way, and that's a much smaller space than every possible way.

Re: All Bitcoin private keys are on this website

#314
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…

Have you explored the space of "poorly generated keys"? I assume someone has screwed up their key generation at some point in a predictable way, and that's a much smaller space than every possible way.

There used to be brain wallets which were private key derived from a password. A lot of those got brute forced back in the day

Re: All Bitcoin private keys are on this website

#315
post #284

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Except that they aren't taking anything from anyone. It's information. They might be copying it. And you might argue things like privacy count, and I'd be willing to hear your reasoning, but this shouldn't be like magic. Yeah, someone was silly to pay hard earned money in exchange from useless tokens. It was a gamble. If the useless tokens get stolen, I'm sorry to say, but whoever paid for BTC already lost their weal…

> Except that they aren't taking anything from anyone. It's information. They might be copying it. It's true that information is infinitely abundant. However, unlike copyrighted works, private keys are not supposed to be shared. There should never be more than one copy of that number in the entire universe. If people can brute force keys by guessing, we've probably got bigger problems. Obtaining that number without a…

> Obtaining that number without authorization is already a crime. Accessing computers illegally to exfiltrate data is already a crime. Breaking into a physical safe in order to obtain a paper key is already a crime.

Sure thing. Hence, the importance of analyzing each case individually. If unauthorized computer access is used, sure thing a crime was committed. If someone created a wallet using a stupid wallet generator which used this website to "create" private keys, and someone else also had this silly idea, and someone deposited Bitcoin on a wallet created by this mean and and someone else took it, then no crime was committed.

Re: All Bitcoin private keys are on this website

#316
post #308
post #284

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Except that they aren't taking anything from anyone. It's information. They might be copying it. And you might argue things like privacy count, and I'd be willing to hear your reasoning, but this shouldn't be like magic. Yeah, someone was silly to pay hard earned money in exchange from useless tokens. It was a gamble. If the useless tokens get stolen, I'm sorry to say, but whoever paid for BTC already lost their weal…

So if I do a bank transfer from your account to mine, I'm just "copying information".

No. You're accessing computer resources that you don't own and you aren't authorized to.

Re: All Bitcoin private keys are on this website

#317
post #194

Earlier quoted context omitted.

And then, when you "hit the jackpot", will you become a thief? Or will you just feel like you picked a lock, smile and pull the door back shut.

As they say "the unstoppable law of unbreakable code". You will become the "rightful" owner of those tokens, unless they happen to belong to one of the Not-The-Owners of that particular blockchain. If they are, they will just fork a blockchain removing your money from your wallet. Vitalik and Co already did this with Ethereum after TheDAO contract execution as designed, because their own funds were affected.

That only true if you remain anonymous or out of jurisdiction. Bitcoin has no EULA, local law applies to property.

Re: All Bitcoin private keys are on this website

#318

Earlier quoted context omitted.

And then, when you "hit the jackpot", will you become a thief? Or will you just feel like you picked a lock, smile and pull the door back shut.

While I don't agree with this like of reasoning I think a potential counter argument would be that in crypto currency ownership is determined by access to private keys and not other traditional means (essentially this argument says its not stealing because ownership is determined by access).

That only works if Bitcoin has a EULA or a law is passed.

Why wouldn't the same logic apply to any property?

Re: All Bitcoin private keys are on this website

#319
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…

I always wanted to make a lottery which randomly bruteforces against Satoshis initially mined coins. Therefore you won't harm a financial institution on the way to win.

Re: All Bitcoin private keys are on this website

#320

I get that it's statistically impossible to actually rob bitcoin using this site (by finding a "green" private key). But can anyone explain why I am able to find so many "yellow" ones (empty wallets that have previously made transactions)? I expected going in to _only_ find "red" (never used) wallets and was surprised to find that was very much not the case.

As far as I have found, the yellow ones appear on the first pages and last pages. The first key listed is this: 5HpHagT65TZzG1PH3CSu63k8DbpvD8s5ip4nEB3kEsreAnchuDf

That key might look large, but I believe it is actually the number 1 in WIF format. See here: https://learnmeabitcoin.com/technical/wif

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