Topic: BitIndex - The time, money, and computing power wasting database project (Read 3601 times)

Hi BitcoinCitizen86403, I enjoyed your little hoax, but in case anyone is worried about the security of their bitcoins because of BitIndex let me put you at ease with some simple calculations which will help to put the security of bitcoin in perspective.

There are exactly 2^160 possible bitcoin addresses, which translates to 1.46 * 10^48.  The reason BitcoinCitizen86403 had some of us concerned is because we humans can't conceive of such enormous numbers.  Let's make them easier to grasp.  

1. Imagine that every possible bitcoin address is a molecule of water.  It is trivial to calculate that 1.46 * 10^48 / 6 * 10^23 (Avagadro's number) is 2.44 * 10^24 moles.  Multiply by the molecular weight of water (18) gives us a mass of 4.38 * 10^25 grams.  And as 1 cubic centimeter of water also weighs 1 gram we can calculate the volume of the droplet of water, which turns out to be 44 billion cubic kilometers.  Using the formula Vol = 4/3 πr^3 we can now calculate that the diameter of the 'droplet' would be 4376km.  This would be 32 times the volume of ALL the water on earth, including oceans, rivers, lakes, polar ice etc.  Or to put it another way, our existing moon is 3475km in diameter - 900km less than Bitmoon.

2. You stated on your blog that after four months you had reached address 1,325,000,000,000,000.  And you ask us to believe that you actually found an address with a non-zero balance among them.  Quite impressive to have archived and checked 1,325 trillion addresses for bitcoin balances, but let's put that on our water scale.  A droplet of 1,325 trillion water molecules would have a diameter of 0.04mm.  That is about the size of a pollen grain.

3. On blockchain.info you can check the number of unique bitcoin addresses currently in use (ie non-zero).  This is about 200,000.  200,000 water molecules would make a droplet 22 nanometers in diameter.  About the size of a virus.

4. So, if we are to believe you, you have effectively succeeded in firing a pollen grain totally at random into the heart of Bitmoon and hitting, by chance, the one and only special particle (the size of a virus) which contains anything of value, which you say you declined to steal anyway.

5. Furthermore, if you continue to hash away at the problem with 10,000 times the computing power that you already have, after 100 years you will have archived 4 * 10^21 addresses.  On our water scale this will make a droplet of 6mm diameter.  So after spending your fortune along the way you can have your fun by firing a 6mm bullet instead of a pollen grain.  Anyway I will not be losing sleep over it.  I wish you the best of luck, but I think we are all safe from BitIndex.

This seems to be an entire post just to 1. Tell everyone how rich you got off Bitcoin. 2. Consistently make rude comments to anyone who questions you, your project, or your motives. Why post? Although you have every right to, just curious why you would take the time.

Is this what your looking for? sounds like the same project

updates?

Another one who is an absolute genius but still cant read enough to get the whole picture before opening his mouth.

Yes, we can calculate odds without a blockchain.

No, we cannot calculate how many times we have beat the odds without actually beating the odds.

But keep on letting your fingers vomit on the keyboard. We dont mind

No, it is not historical data because it is not there without your random data set. Someone else duplicating your efforts would get a different result.

Besides, the answers about the probability of a hash collision your simulation can give could equally well be found completely within your own generated data. You don't even need to look at the block chain.

But keep doing what you're doing, I don't mind

Historical data =

# of times a birthday attack would have succeeded on the blockchain (if our intent was to steal something)
# of address collisions, & # of Address & Key collisions
# Odds vs. successful collisions data points. (showing that the math can be beaten)

Please show us where any of the above data is already in the blockchain, and for the hundreds of thousands of dollars you save us, we might just share some with you

This doesn't really make sense does it? The only data not already in the block chain is random data you generate yourself 

The 6th node is almost halfway filled with just under 134TB stored already. About 1 more week until it is fully loaded with addresses.

In other great news, we have just ordered all the components for the first of the new 360TB nodes which will house 60 WD 6TB drives each. We are expecting the components to arrive next week so we can begin assembly.

and finally, We have decided we are going to re-name the project as many of the community here who have jumped on board with helping on the project in different ways have said it needs a better title. We should have one by the time of the next update.

Sure why not, we were just super slow to the draw last time when one of the addresses in the database had a positive balance and totally forgot to steal the bitcoins? You didn't read much did you?

Let me recap for you:

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Maybe you missed the part that even if we kept expanding this project for the next 5 years straight, the chances that we would have your bitcoin address in our database are LESS THAN 0.000000000000000000000000000003242% .

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For the few of you who messaged us inquiring if you could pay to have access to the database. THE ANSWER IS NO. We are doing this as a project to have fun, kill time, and learn a little about data warehousing. We have not, and would not ever steal someones bitcoins just because we could even though the chances are astronomically small.

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Q: Doesn't that mean that you could steal someones bitcoins?
A: Theoretically yes, but the odds are very slim, we do have a way of monitoring addresses in the database and in the past 2 months we have only seen 1 positive balance come through, of which was positive balances for less than 1 hour which lead us to believe they were part of a mixing or tumbling service sequence. No we didnt steal it, and never would. we have enough bitcoin that we dont need to. This is for fun, not for malicious purposes.

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If any of that from above was not clear enough, we are not brute forcing peoples addresses in hopes of stealing bitcoin for profit. As for account recovery, it is a far cry from anything we could accomplish right now with only 6 nodes and only 5.5 of them full so far. Honestly in a hundred years the chances that we have the key to someones address who actually lost it is slim to none.

To clarify and make it a little more clear. None of this is for profit, we could find better ways to spend hundreds of thousands of dollars trying to make an ROI then cataloging bitcoin private keys. Hell just hanging on to the bitcoin and waiting for the price to rise again would be 10 million times more ROI or profit than this project would ever make us.

"We will use this for password recovery". Sounds like your trying to brute force addresses for profit?

Part 1: If your database is offline then how did you detect the address match in the chain?

The database is hard wired to a node which is wired to a relay which is wired to a machine that runs the insight API which runs from a remote database which is populated by a remote bitcoin client connection.

Part 2: And if your purpose was truly not for profit why would you even scan it?

Research and historical data collection.

If your database is offline then how did you detect the address match in the chain? And if your purpose was truly not for profit why would you even scan it?

It is a really expensive experiment and nothing more, we too understand and had the same concerns with the database project as you do and that is why it is completely cut off from any network or internet access so it could never be hacked into as it is not, has never been, and never will be online. Furthermore the only people with access to it are the ones building it and we have no need to steal anything from it. Although that is not to say if the address for the DPR coins or something along those lines came up in the DB that we would not take them back and distribute them back to the BTC community as we believe that the fashion in which the US marshals have found to sell them before guilty verdicts are placed is criminal in itself.

Future key generation is not far off, one of our team who is not fluent in DB languages is currently working on an FPGA solution to generating addresses in the long term as our storage solution problems are fixed. It should allow us to build a new node and generate enough addresses to fill it at a rate of 1 node per day, although for that to happen we would also have to solve the .csv import to SQL EE problem as even with 100 threads on 4 12 core processors and 256 ram it is still a very long and painful process to get the files we generate input into the DB.

Even still a series of FPGA address/key generators still would not be really threatening to BTC as we are still confined by the limits of a computer as the FPGA's will only handle the IO and computing and the software interface still has to run multiple threads writing multiple files to keep up with the rate that the FPGA is cranking them out and you can only get even the biggest server processors to write those files to ssd's so fast.

On an insanity scale, even spending millions of dollars on developing an ASIC which does nothing but run the IO for computing addresses, the time to generate a specific individual address even with 50 TH/s of address generating ASIC power would be something to the tune of a few hundred million years.

All in all even within the next 5 years if we keep up at 300% of what we can produce and store now. Its really nothing to be concerned about, like we said, we got lucky, or whatever you want to call it and got to witness one of the addresses in our database receive then about an hour later send bitcoin to a different address. That was pure luck and not likely to ever happen again as it was never likely in the first place.

Furthermore, the amount of people who have the amount of money something like this requires are limited. Usually scammers and schemers are out to make a buck because they are too broke to do anything else productive so they could not afford the hardware to do something like this on the next to nothing chance they ever see a penny of what they spent back. So that leaves it to guys like us who have a lot of money that pretty much was all pure luck in itself when bitcoin became worth something real, that are more curious than we are spend conscious and dreamed up an insane, fun, laughable project to keep us busy for years to come.

We're not here to impress or stun with our cunning English. But if you are applying to be an editor free of charge for all future posts you are more than welcome to it.

Terra is land or Earth, based on the French word for Earth
Tera is an order of magnitude.

Might want to fix that. On your site and this forum. Doesn't reflect well on the team.


There are a whole bunch of other English issues on your site and post but no one, including me cares. Terra and tera- is a pretty glaring mix-up though, especially when it is in big green title letters on your site. I don't want to be your editor, I just wanted to point out an error. You're welcome. I can see you take criticism well by sarcastically passive-aggressively attacking those that comment.

Just realised that with an extremely powerful computer anyones keys can technically be found eventually. Kinda scary, your coins could be randomly moved one day

..Rude...
I am not saying it is possible or probable, I am just questioning the impetus behind setting up the operation. I also do not gamble. If I had a significant store of bitcoins, I would not want even an astronomically small chance that my keys are stored with you. Looking at if in a larger context, if someone were to gain access to this database with malicious intent, the odds of finding ANY key pair that has coins goes up greatly.
You also say "current technology", which is always changing. Who knows what future key-generation may be possible?
Just saying.

Maybe you missed the part that even if we kept expanding this project for the next 5 years straight, the chances that we would have your bitcoin address in our database are LESS THAN 0.000000000000000000000000000003242% .

So it is very secure and anonymous to a point. Its secure in that current technology does not permit nor allow the brute forcing of a single particular address statistically. But at the same time anyone who gambles knows that statistics and luck are two different things and the reality of the matter is that even though the chances are so astronomically small it is safe to say in most cases that its impossible. It does not mean it is truly impossible for someone to generate a private key that contains bitcoin because even a 0.00000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000 0000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000 0000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000 0000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000001% chance means that it could happen however unlikely.

I really hope you did a little more homework in bitcoin before buying into it than to not know that.

I thought a large part of the draw to bitcoin was that it was secure and anonymous.... If "private" keys and addresses are searchable, even a small fraction of them, that sounds like a security and privacy hole.