Is it possible to find lost bitcoins? - page 8.

Phyton76

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Quote from: stompix on July 17, 2017, 01:29:38 PM

Nobody.

Because they are not hidden in sand on some island or in some garbage bin.
They are hidden by math.

https://bitcointalksearch.org/topic/what-are-the-chances-of-an-address-collision-and-what-happens-when-it-does-104461
https://bitcoin.stackexchange.com/questions/22/is-it-possible-to-brute-force-bitcoin-address-creation-in-order-to-steal-money

Haven't double checked the numbers but those might be close, basically you will need 2^45 years.

As what we all know it is really impossible you can only open a lost bitcoins if you know the password or the private key of the wallet if you forgot the private key of your wallet and you have bitcoins there it is consider as lost and no one could open it maybe if the site hack your bitcoins.

Qunenin

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Sure it can be done, but the odds of doing it are about the same as solo mining finding a block. in layman's terms with Bitcoin, the block of transactions is encrypted, the encryption key thrown away, and the miners try to crack that key. So basically finding lost Bitcoin is an almost-identical process. Now the private keys of wallets is based on a specific hash, there was a period of time when an easier method would be to brute-force a 12 word passphrase on a software wallet.

SvenBomvolen

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Quote from: senin on July 24, 2017, 03:04:11 PM

If the bitcoins were lost for some reason, no one will find them. They completely disappear from circulation. This is the essence of the digital currency. Therefore, it is necessary to reconcile that many bitcoins will disappear forever, if someone has forgotten the password from his mobile wallet or for other reasons has ceased to have access to it.

But don't you think that with such temps the biggest part of Bitcoins can be lost one day? Bitcoin is shorted by 21 millions number, but people lost passwords and forget about their wallets or even die every day, so, in fact the number of Bitcoin is going to be smaller and smaller day by day.

deisik

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Quote from: flippener on July 24, 2017, 04:53:13 PM

Quote from: deisik on July 24, 2017, 04:10:52 PM

Let's assume that Bitcoin doesn't die in a few hundred years from now on, and our descendants (or even us ourselves if we manage to live that long) could reclaim these coins (coins that didn't move all that time) as public property for the common good

If you're looking that far into the future presumably brute force hacking could have improved so much that the missing bitcoins could be recovered.

In fact, we don't need that

We don't need to wait till advanced brute forcing becomes available (through quantum computing or otherwise). Actually, we don't need to wait any time at all. All we need is consensus what to do with lost coins and consensus in respect which coins to consider as lost. If we have both we can easily retrieve the coins that we think as lost. We would only need to make a few small changes to protocol (i.e. the way Bitcoin transactions are processed). For example, if it becomes known for certain that Satoshi is dead (provided he was alive in the first place at all, of course), and no one is going to claim his coins (his heirs or beneficiaries), we could retrieve and share them among all active Bitcoin holders (or spend them on something useful)

szpalata

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Quote from: LouVandetta on July 24, 2017, 08:04:25 PM

Quote from: tairus91 on July 17, 2017, 01:12:20 PM

Millions of bitcoins are considered lost. Who will find them?

Nobody, I think.

Just like you said, millions of bitcoins are considered "Lost".
It means that it is already lost. I don't know how it works, but I do think that it's really hard or even impossible to find those lost bitcoins .

Those that are stuck in wallets and cannot sponser themselves out because of high transaction fees are all many and could contribute significantly to lost bitcoins globally.

73blazer

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The question is.... How much computing power would it take. Mabey at some.point likely not in our lifetime..
it may become.profitable for large mine farms to turn thier computing power towards brute forcing private keys. Of course that may have the secondary effect of crashing the price. But Mabey not if you mine old coins haven't been spent in decades. Just a thought

LouVandetta

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Quote from: tairus91 on July 17, 2017, 01:12:20 PM

Millions of bitcoins are considered lost. Who will find them?

Nobody, I think.

Just like you said, millions of bitcoins are considered "Lost".
It means that it is already lost. I don't know how it works, but I do think that it's really hard or even impossible to find those lost bitcoins .

lighpulsar07

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No. You can't get access your bitcoins without your private key once you lost your private key, you will lose your access to your bitcoins. Bitcoin in that wallet are considered lost although there are some recovery services online but it's not a guarantee you recover your wallet and gain access to your coins so, try to create backups of your private key.

babar123

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those bitcoin are like gift for everyone, they decrease the inflation and permits bitcoin to worth more, it is rather a good new that many bitcoin got burnt for the bitocin holders, would be nice to know how many but we will never know, its certainly much more than we all believe

CARrency

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Quote from: J Gambler on July 24, 2017, 05:50:44 PM

Quote from: tairus91 on July 17, 2017, 01:12:20 PM

Millions of bitcoins are considered lost. Who will find them?

i think it is impossible to find it. Due to the anonymously of bitcoin there will be no traces of lost bitcoins. We all know that bitcoin is anonymous so if there will be lost i think it can never be found because it has no traces. That will be our disadvantage and an advantage also for us. Just earn it again.

As I've been saying to my other posts, bitcoin is not really anonymous, there is been a proof about that. The reason that lost bitcoin can't be found is because paper wallets need your passcode, but if you save it to your computer and deleted it, you're done. Also, if you send them to a wrong address which is not really a bitcoin address, that will be void.

J Gambler

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Quote from: tairus91 on July 17, 2017, 01:12:20 PM

Millions of bitcoins are considered lost. Who will find them?

i think it is impossible to find it. Due to the anonymously of bitcoin there will be no traces of lost bitcoins. We all know that bitcoin is anonymous so if there will be lost i think it can never be found because it has no traces. That will be our disadvantage and an advantage also for us. Just earn it again.

galeriademodacom

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"Lost coins only make everyone else’s coins worth slightly more. Think of it as a donation to everyone" - Satoshi Nakamoto Cheesy

dothebeats

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Quote from: BitcoinUKmedia on July 24, 2017, 04:49:29 PM

Could a bitcoin mining rig be put to use try to hash the right private key - or is that a stupid answer?

You guess it right. It's a stupid answer. Bitcoins that are lost together with the private key of the address they are in are lost in limbo and would be very hard to recover. Theoretically, it would require millions of quantum computer to start brute-forcing just a single address since there are 2^96 private keys that is a "possible" pair to the public address.

batang_bitcoin

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Quote from: tairus91 on July 17, 2017, 01:12:20 PM

Millions of bitcoins are considered lost. Who will find them?

They are burned bitcoins and there's no way for anybody to recover them even Satoshi himself, unless he'll do something with the codings and will recover the private keys and the seeds of this wallets. But if bitcoins are gone now, they are totally lost forever. And that's making the supply lesser in the market others are burning bitcoins.

flippener

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Quote from: deisik on July 24, 2017, 04:10:52 PM

Let's assume that Bitcoin doesn't die in a few hundred years from now on, and our descendants (or even us ourselves if we manage to live that long) could reclaim these coins (coins that didn't move all that time) as public property for the common good

If you're looking that far into the future presumably brute force hacking could have improved so much that the missing bitcoins could be recovered.

BitcoinUKmedia

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Could a bitcoin mining rig be put to use try to hash the right private key - or is that a stupid answer?

pressureonme

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Quote from: stompix on July 17, 2017, 01:29:38 PM

Nobody.

Because they are not hidden in sand on some island or in some garbage bin.
They are hidden by math.

https://bitcointalksearch.org/topic/what-are-the-chances-of-an-address-collision-and-what-happens-when-it-does-104461
https://bitcoin.stackexchange.com/questions/22/is-it-possible-to-brute-force-bitcoin-address-creation-in-order-to-steal-money

Haven't double checked the numbers but those might be close, basically you will need 2^45 years.

Somebody says brute force method would work to encrypt some wallets, well we see it's in terms of thousands years to encrypt them. No method would work to obtain lost wallets then.

deisik

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Quote from: tairus91 on July 17, 2017, 01:12:20 PM

Millions of bitcoins are considered lost. Who will find them?

What's lost is lost

But there can still be a workaround, though. Let's assume that Bitcoin doesn't die in a few hundred years from now on, and our descendants (or even us ourselves if we manage to live that long) could reclaim these coins (coins that didn't move all that time) as public property for the common good (after some grace period expires within which you could claim the legitimate ownership of them, of course). It would require some modification to the Bitcoin protocol, but other than that (and consensus required for that), there are no particular hurdles or issues to do exactly that, i.e. find them back

klarki

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The probability of this is very small.

NorrisK

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The only way to "find" them would be to stumble upon the private key that holds them.

The odds of this happening are so small that it is basically impossible to find them.

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