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?
It’s theft, but I suppose you could claim it was really your private key the whole time. Would the other person be able to prove it was theirs?
All Bitcoin private keys are on this website
351–360 of 398 posts
Re: All Bitcoin private keys are on this website
#352Earlier quoted context omitted.
You're still stealing from someone, but it's harder for them to catch you.
No. You're not stealing from anyone. It's decentralized and bits have no owner. If you say 'hey, here is my Bitcoin transaction' and others accept, and you just had luck to find a valid address, it is not the same as stealing. Bitcoin has no value.
Re: All Bitcoin private keys are on this website
#353Earlier quoted context omitted.
No. Invalid comparison. If you legitimately discover a cryptocurrency wallet private key by sheet lucky, and such cryptocurrency has no backing = is based in pure thin air, such as the case of Bitcoin, and there are public nodes which doesn't require you to abide by contracts that would forbid you to do so (which is supposedly all nodes), you're good to use that as you wish and it won't be a crime. It's unethical to…
Bits on a server representing your account balance also have no tangibility
Re: All Bitcoin private keys are on this website
#354It'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…
https://github.com/TheDen/btc-heist/blob/5cf0ef73857277f1321... You don't need the f.close() here - the context manager does it for you.
Re: All Bitcoin private keys are on this website
#355Earlier quoted context omitted.
Same with private cryptocurrency keys. Otherwise, accessing non-public APIs with weak security by playing around with the URL would be legal.
No. Invalid comparison. If you legitimately discover a cryptocurrency wallet private key by sheet lucky, and such cryptocurrency has no backing = is based in pure thin air, such as the case of Bitcoin, and there are public nodes which doesn't require you to abide by contracts that would forbid you to do so (which is supposedly all nodes), you're good to use that as you wish and it won't be a crime. It's unethical to…
Re: All Bitcoin private keys are on this website
#356Earlier quoted context omitted.
Why a thief? Bitcoin is a silly idea based on scarcity that doesn't exist. If someone generated the right numbers by chance and had luck, I wouldn't say they'd be doing anything wrong getting whatever is there. It's not the same as stealing data, and is not the same as hacking into a banking system. It's decentralized, and there isn't the concept of real scarcity. It's not even hacking. https://henvic.dev/posts/bitco…
Because whether or not Bitcoin is silly, someone else paid their hard earned money for the coins, usually we say that makes someone the owner. What do you usually call someone who takes a thing from its owner without permission?
You may get lucky with KYC, but who in their right mind would gen a collision only to get caught on the cash out?
You're not in control once someone has your pk unless you can mobilize a 51% attack to fix your problem.
Re: All Bitcoin private keys are on this website
#357Quote: "A private key is basically just a number between 1 and 2^256" Anyone who still uses 2^256 as key length deserves to have their bitcoins stolen. Form what I know modern wallets have their keys more like 2^4096, at least. Heck, even Satoshi did that with its wallet, you know the famous >1M bitcoins he mined at beginning.
Re: All Bitcoin private keys are on this website
#358I guess I got lucky with this one: https://playxo.com/bitcoin/904625697166532776746648320380374... How is it possible?
Re: All Bitcoin private keys are on this website
#359Earlier quoted context omitted.
Same with private cryptocurrency keys. Otherwise, accessing non-public APIs with weak security by playing around with the URL would be legal.
No. Invalid comparison. If you legitimately discover a cryptocurrency wallet private key by sheet lucky, and such cryptocurrency has no backing = is based in pure thin air, such as the case of Bitcoin, and there are public nodes which doesn't require you to abide by contracts that would forbid you to do so (which is supposedly all nodes), you're good to use that as you wish and it won't be a crime. It's unethical to…
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Property is legally defined as 'Not only money and other tangible things of value, but also includes any intangible right considered as a source or element of income or wealth.'
That includes protectable ideas, digital files, financial instruments (like stocks and bonds, loans and credits), computer graphics, certain arrangements of words and quite a bit more.
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What does tangibility mean to you? That allows you steal the examples in the second paragraph without legal reprecussions nor ethical dilemmas?
Re: All Bitcoin private keys are on this website
#360Earlier quoted context omitted.
Why a thief? Bitcoin is a silly idea based on scarcity that doesn't exist. If someone generated the right numbers by chance and had luck, I wouldn't say they'd be doing anything wrong getting whatever is there. It's not the same as stealing data, and is not the same as hacking into a banking system. It's decentralized, and there isn't the concept of real scarcity. It's not even hacking. https://henvic.dev/posts/bitco…
Bitcoin has a hard cap on how many will ever be in existence. If that's not the definition of real scarcity, then what is? Your implication that bitcoin is easily divided somehows means it isn't finite is simply wrong. Firstly it's not infinitely divisible, secondly things that _are_ infinitely divisible do not just become inflated simply because this property exists. I find it rather revealing that so many anti-cryp…