Bitcoin Addresses: What happens after 20 years? - page 4.

Plento

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Quote from: farlack on May 28, 2014, 02:49:22 PM

There are this many addresses

1,461,501,637,330,902,918,203,684,832,716,283,019,655,932,542,976

Is that actually how many there are or did you pull that out of your behind?
If that's the number... wow.

DannyHamilton

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Quote from: haploid23 on May 28, 2014, 06:52:22 PM

And how did you guys calculate these numbers? Is it how many possible combinations of all upper case letters, lower case letters, and numbers, with the possible 34 characters?

The bitcoin address is a base58 representation of a 160 bit hash value with a version number on the front and a 4 byte checksum on the end.

Since any given 160 bit hash will always have the same 4 bytes for the checksum, the checksum is not part of the calculation of how many distinct addresses there are. Since we are specifically talking about 1 type of address, the version number is also not part of the calculation of how many distinct addresses there are.

The assumption everyone is making is that if you start with all possible 256 bit numbers (the ECDSA private key), and you calculate the ECDSA public keys (another set of 256 bit numbers), and you hash them with SHA256, and then hash the results of that with RIPEMD160, then you will have an even distribution across all 160 bit values.

Assuming that is true, then the total number of possible addresses is 2¹⁶⁰

Plug 2¹⁶⁰ into a calculator (or into the Google search box), and you'll find that the result is 1.4615016 X 10⁴⁸

haploid23

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And how did you guys calculate these numbers? Is it how many possible combinations of all upper case letters, lower case letters, and numbers, with the possible 34 characters?

nkocevar

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Quote from: galbros on May 28, 2014, 06:05:54 PM

Quote from: nkocevar on May 28, 2014, 05:47:34 PM

At my current calculations it would take all 7 billion people in the world to use 2,087,859,481,901,289,883,148 addresses. in other words, they would all have to generate 114,403,259,282,262,459 a day for 50 YEARS to run out of addresses. Running out of addresses is unfathomable.

Stuff like this is actually helpful. While I realized the number of addresses was huge the thought had occurred to me that each person makes millions of financial transactions and so putting the number in terms like that really helps.

And yes, people are really poor with really big numbers, even distinguishing between millions, billions, and trillions taxes them.

Good Luck!

haha hey, these calculations literally took 45 seconds. All I did was copy and paste into the windows calculator xD Glad I could help though!

wachtwoord

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This topic made me chuckle

galbros

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Quote from: nkocevar on May 28, 2014, 05:47:34 PM

At my current calculations it would take all 7 billion people in the world to use 2,087,859,481,901,289,883,148 addresses. in other words, they would all have to generate 114,403,259,282,262,459 a day for 50 YEARS to run out of addresses. Running out of addresses is unfathomable.

Stuff like this is actually helpful. While I realized the number of addresses was huge the thought had occurred to me that each person makes millions of financial transactions and so putting the number in terms like that really helps.

And yes, people are really poor with really big numbers, even distinguishing between millions, billions, and trillions taxes them.

Good Luck!

nkocevar

sr. member

Activity: 294

Merit: 250

At my current calculations it would take all 7 billion people in the world to use 2,087,859,481,901,289,883,148 addresses. in other words, they would all have to generate 114,403,259,282,262,459 a day for 50 YEARS to run out of addresses. Running out of addresses is unfathomable.

drrussellshane

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Quote from: DannyHamilton on May 28, 2014, 04:46:12 PM

Quote from: Jcw188 on May 28, 2014, 04:20:05 PM

I assume this factors in the fact that many people are trying to get vanity addresses? how fast can these generators generate new addys?

It doesn't matter. It isn't a concern.

Many people seem to have a very difficult time comprehending just how big the numbers we are dealing with are.

In their defense, the human brain itself is not particularly good with grokking such large numbers.

freedomno1

legendary

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Learning the troll avoidance button :)

That is a giant scale simply put their are enough generated addresses that it would not run out for a long time
Anyways here is the FAQ should help answer most questions
https://en.bitcoin.it/wiki/FAQ

DannyHamilton

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Quote from: Jcw188 on May 28, 2014, 04:20:05 PM

I assume this factors in the fact that many people are trying to get vanity addresses? how fast can these generators generate new addys?

It doesn't matter. It isn't a concern.

Many people seem to have a very difficult time comprehending just how big the numbers we are dealing with are.

jc01480

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Nope..

We'll all be 20 years older.

Jcw188

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Carpe Diem

I assume this factors in the fact that many people are trying to get vanity addresses? how fast can these generators generate new addys?

dandate2

newbie

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Possibility of abiogenesis (life created on earth without God) has been calculated:

1 out of 10,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000

So don't think we'll run out of wallets

GogglesPisano

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Very informative, I have often wondered about this myself.

jbrnt

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There are 2^160 unique addresses, that is around 1.4 x 10^48
The blockchain reports that only 200000 unique addresses were ever used, that is 2 x 10^5
https://blockchain.info/charts/n-unique-addresses

Estimated from the chart, used addresses triple every year.
In 20 years time, we could have used 7 x 10^14 addresses,
The address space will still be 2 x 10^33 times more than the used addresses.

Probability of address collision is still extremely low, but yes, it does made you feel less assured.

farlack

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Everyone on the planet would have to have like 200,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000 wallets to duplicate.

steelboy

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Quote from: S4VV4S on May 28, 2014, 02:44:32 PM

So, from what I understand is that Bitcoin addresses can be created "on the fly" at whatever number at a time without the fear of generating a duplicate address because of the chances.

Well, Bitcoin seems to be doing pretty well, so,
what happens after 20 years?

I am pretty sure that at some point unique addresses are going to start running out....

So what happens?

lol, i don't know exactly but the figures are ridiculous. Something like if an address is created every second it would be trillions of years before we run out. Probably more to be honest Cheesy

DeathAndTaxes

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Gerald Davis

Quote from: S4VV4S on May 28, 2014, 02:51:33 PM

Quote from: farlack on May 28, 2014, 02:49:22 PM

There are this many addresses

1,461,501,637,330,902,918,203,684,832,716,283,019,655,932,542,976

What, currently or possible?

The number of possible addresses (2^160)

Currently there are only 6M addresses associated with any unspent output ("funded").

If you are worried assume there are 1 billion Bitcoin users and they each generate 1 billion new addresses per day. How long would it take to generate 1% of the possible addresses.

farlack

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Quote from: S4VV4S on May 28, 2014, 02:51:33 PM

Quote from: farlack on May 28, 2014, 02:49:22 PM

There are this many addresses

1,461,501,637,330,902,918,203,684,832,716,283,019,655,932,542,976

What, currently or possible?

Possible. We wont ever reach that.

Syke

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Quote from: S4VV4S on May 28, 2014, 02:44:32 PM

So, from what I understand is that Bitcoin addresses can be created "on the fly" at whatever number at a time without the fear of generating a duplicate address because of the chances.

Well, Bitcoin seems to be doing pretty well, so,
what happens after 20 years?

I am pretty sure that at some point unique addresses are going to start running out....

The sun will run out of fuel before we run out of addresses.

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