Topic: Bitcoin Addresses: What happens after 20 years? (Read 3925 times)

entropy source use a referencial system, too ...

if you talk about the random formula based on "event" of the bitcoin ... it's, at the beginning, a question of time/date ... and after this, the weight of the first block and all following blocks.

in this, random of bitcoin adress is unique ... and so, not "only based on time/date random genesis formula".
you can't create random function in mathematical environment ... because all formula answer a same result when you use it.

that's why A.I. don't exist now ... because programming tool are based on mathematic.
if you boot a hundred of machines identicals with the all choice of mathematic formula, the result will be always the same on all machines (depending of the variation of the supply for the final speed of calculation).

find me a mathematical formula that it don't always send the same result ...

---

For me, it's not a problem ... but for beginners, it's good to understand that you can't simply use a private key because of the time/date simply designed random formula "at the begin" of bitcoin network.

all beginners think that "generation of bitcoin adress" is based on a non-lineairy random strategy ... it's not true.
because time/date evolve (and you can't back to the past), all adress must and are different (+ variable with bitcoin network event).

one quindecillion,
four hundred sixty-one quattuordecillion,
five hundred one tredecillion,
six hundred thirty-seven duodecillion,
three hundred thirty undecillion,
nine hundred two decillion,
nine hundred eighteen nonillion,
two hundred three octillion,
six hundred eighty-four septillion,
eight hundred thirty-two sextillion,
seven hundred sixteen quintillion,
two hundred eighty-three quadrillion,
nineteen trillion,
six hundred fifty-five billion,
nine hundred thirty-two million,
five hundred forty-two thousand,
nine hundred seventy-six

My calc three/stats teacher stated it as:

A lottery is a tax levied on the innumerate.

:-)

Yeah that is still wrong no matter how many times you repeat it.   There are plenty of entropy sources which don't involve time.  


If you are referring to entries like this:


They are not references to NTP.  It is comparisons of the local machine clock against the network median time.  It isn't used to seed the PRNG but to limit how far miners can drift the timestamps of blocks.

with no time reference, you can't create a random formula ...

i build microprocessor for industrial use (without NTP chip) ... and random is only possible because crytal frequency is not "regulary the same in identical chip".

the adress of bitcoin must be generate in random and "row" strategy.
only based time/date strategy do this.

that why, in log of bitcoin-qt, you can see NTP mark regulary to correct the main process of mining/RPC orders.

There's a difference between knowing the number of possible combinations and actually doing anything with them. We've established that even just generating them, a process that takes just a fraction of a second for each, would require more time than we have before the heat death of the universe.

Your NSA will most definitely need to build a memory storage bigger than this planet to store this amount of data.

Sorry you lost me.
What do you mean?

Actually generating all these addresses??

That wont happen.

Basically the reason I asked this question is that I am working on a project that uses a new (disposable) address for each transaction.

I wanted to know what are the chances of.....

The chances are well, non existant.

You're joking, right?

I agree that finding private keys via brute force is not possible 

But what if an agency such as the NSA simply goes ahead and reserves all 1,461,501,637,330,902,918,203,684,832,716,283,019,655,932,542,976 addresses for themselves? That would kill BTC wouldn't it? 

They are not.  Even the largest numbers in astronomy are MUCH MUCH smaller than 2^160.

These numbers are Carl Sagan big. 

We can effectively say it is not possible to run out of addresses.

This is wrong.  The probability is 1.0.  For every earth observed life exists.  Abiogenesis occurred.

As the previous posts have explained, there are so many possible accounts the chances of two people creating the same account is too small to worry about.  The chances of the Sun exploding next week are much higher, for example.

However, there is a non-negligible risk that the software that one uses to generate the key/address pair is malicious, so that it will pick one among only 10 billion different address (say), rather than among the full set of 2^160.  Without inspecting the code, there is no way to tell that one's address has been generated in that fashion.  indeed, the malicious code may even erase itself after a certain time, putting the correct software in its place; so that not even code inspection would work.

After distributing that malicious software to one or more unsuspecting users, the hacker generates all those 10 billion pairs, and monitors the block chain until one of those addresses shows up with a large enough balance.  Then she issues a transfer of the whole balance to her own address.  The victim would not be able to prevent that, and would not even be able to prove that he did not issue the transaction himself.  Note that this attack works even if the victim is careful to run the address/key generation software in a separate computer that is isolated from the internet, and never takes the keys out of there.

In fact, there is no way of telling whether such a hack has occurred already.  Maybe some hacker out there has a large file of address/key pairs that includes the the private keys of many unsuspecting victims, and she is only waiting for the best moment to strike.

A variant of this scam is feasible also if the key/address generation software is legitimate but has a bug in its random number generator that limits it to, say, 10 billion different addresses.  A hacker that discovers the bug could then exploit it as described above.  The chances of such a bug being introduced by accident and then discovered by a hacker are certainly small -- but still bigger than those of a collision among 2^160 addresses.  

(Actually, such a stupid "bad random generator" bug was found recently in the Brazilian electronic voting machines.  It could allow anyone to discover someone else's vote using only data files that must be public by law and the time when that person voted.  Ironically, that bug was put in by the developers in order to "strengthen" the machine's security.)

In yet another variant, the malicious code is distributed through a "trojan horse", some apparently unrelated software such as a solitaire game.  When executed, the malicious program silently scans the computer's file system for some popular key/address generation software, and modifies it by weakening its random number generator, as above.

The moral of this tale is that one cannot be careful enough when choosing, downloading, and running the key/address generation software.  It is one of the soft spots that hackers are going to aim for.

Rounded somewhat (actually, quite a lot).

The number is one point four six one five quindecillion if you use the short scale for numbers or one point four six one five Octillion if you use the long scale.

Source: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Names_of_large_numbers

No. It isn't.  That wouldn't be "random", that would be "deterministic", since the value could be "determined" based on the time and date.

The bitcoin random function is NOT based on time and date.

adress are generate with a random function ... random function is a variable based on the time and date.
you can't have duplicate adress "over the time".

Of course you will.

I know someone that's bought five $1 lottery tickets every week for the past 20 years that I've known them.  They haven't won the jackpot yet.

Relative to them, I've already "won" $5200.

I suppose they've won some smaller amounts occasionally.  If we assume they've won back about 10% of the total they've spent, then I've "won" about $4,680 more than them.

Compared to the number of people that play, I wouldn't call the number of winners "quite a few", but that's a matter of personal opinion.

Regardless, as with any tax, the government takes some of the revenue gathered and spreads it around to make people feel more comfortable with paying it.  In the case of the lottery, they just don't spread it quite a thinly.  Instead, they take a big chunk of the revenue, and give it all to one person (or small group of people) every now and then to discourage learning about math, and encourage others to keep paying the tax.

If I told you that sales tax was a tax levied on the purchase of merchandise, you wouldn't respond with "As true as what you said might be, a lot of people still make purchases, and the government spends some of that revenue on services for citizens".

But you'll never win if you don't play!

You miss 100% of the chances you don't take!

and other platitudes.