Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

All Bitcoin private keys are on this website

playxo.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

11–20 of 398 posts

Re: All Bitcoin private keys are on this website

#11

Post by danuker »

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?

Human-generated brainwallets are notoriously guessable: https://www.reddit.com/r/Bitcoin/comments/1zti1p/17956_hacke...

Re: All Bitcoin private keys are on this website

#13

Post by sdan »

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?

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

Re: All Bitcoin private keys are on this website

#14

Post by ithinkso »

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?

Miniscule, not zero of course but zero for any practical purpose. The search space is just that much bigger.

Re: All Bitcoin private keys are on this website

#15

Post by Nextgrid »

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?

Introducing the Large Bitcoin Collider: https://lbc.cryptoguru.org/about

Re: All Bitcoin private keys are on this website

#16

Post by danuker »

john_alan wrote: post #6
tromp wrote: post #4

Curiously, after hitting a random page and >> twice, I came upon this page https://playxo.com/bitcoin/904625697166532776746648320380374... that had several keys in use in the past. I would expect this website, in the rare event of discovering some positive balance, to try spending it right away...

Hey John - I came here to ask the same question. How is that possible. Same happened to me. >> leads to the "end" page, it's not as I though a "big jump" from some random page... thus I suspect it's simply addresses that are low entropy, at the end of the range.

Possible causes are caching or random seeding using integer seconds.

Re: All Bitcoin private keys are on this website

#17

Post by roenxi »

tromp wrote: post #4

Curiously, after hitting a random page and >> twice, I came upon this page https://playxo.com/bitcoin/904625697166532776746648320380374... that had several keys in use in the past. I would expect this website, in the rare event of discovering some positive balance, to try spending it right away...

The first page (<<) has similar patterns. Must be someone testing/debugging with hardcoded numbers.

Re: All Bitcoin private keys are on this website

#18

Post by wruza »

tromp wrote: post #4

Curiously, after hitting a random page and >> twice, I came upon this page https://playxo.com/bitcoin/904625697166532776746648320380374... that had several keys in use in the past. I would expect this website, in the rare event of discovering some positive balance, to try spending it right away...

The site doesn’t need people’s luck to find any active wallet, cause it could operate without them. The probability is so small that any reasonable time spent on including a spending routine would be pointless.

Unless the author trusts in luck or has too much free time on their hands.

Edit: or waits for someone to check a page containing their own private key.

Re: All Bitcoin private keys are on this website

#19

Post by tromp »

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.

Re: All Bitcoin private keys are on this website

#20

Post by lordnacho »

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?

One thing you can do that's quite lucrative for someone is to generate all the keys corresponding to common dictionary words like "dog" and "cat". The way I know someone is doing this is I was testing some transactions and somehow whatever I was sending was immediately vanishing. So someone out there has taken a dictionary and done this already.
Post reply on HN