Author

Topic: Liberating Bitcoins held hostage by Satoshi. (Read 678 times)

newbie
Activity: 56
Merit: 0

I love this image.  Great tool when explaining bitcoins.  Thanks for posting.
newbie
Activity: 16
Merit: 0

This is not about a weakness in SHA256,......


or Bitcoin.
legendary
Activity: 1078
Merit: 1003
Why hack a block for a mere 25btc every ten minutes.

This is not about a weakness in SHA256, but human error. Satoshi is, after all only a H4cker.




I have no idea what you're saying Grin  I recommend reading up more on Bitcoin and how it works.
global moderator
Activity: 3794
Merit: 2612
In a world of peaches, don't ask for apple sauce
I dont believe satoshi has any bit coins
Maybe he does. You never know.
newbie
Activity: 16
Merit: 0
Why hack a block for a mere 25btc every ten minutes.

This is not about a weakness in SHA256, but human error. Satoshi is, after all only a H4cker.


legendary
Activity: 1078
Merit: 1003
That's about 5 billion years.

Or about 500 million years longer than the Earth's been around Tongue
hero member
Activity: 950
Merit: 1001
Shouldn't take too long to brute force the keys with several pooled ASICs.
Here's a rough ballpark example, assuming:
Your several ASICs have a combined 500 GH/s
You'd have to make 2^96 possible guesses to get Satoshi's address

(2^96 hashes) / (500,000,000,000 hash/s) = 1.58456325×10^17 seconds
That's about 5 billion years.
hero member
Activity: 756
Merit: 500
Satoshi has invented Bitcoin and given it to the community, saying that he is holding it hostage isn't very fair.
legendary
Activity: 1078
Merit: 1003
Wow, that's a great image, Smiley. I read through it as well. The problem here is that these laws are still theories and can be broken. Will they? Probably not. But there is still a slight possibility.

If we can assume technology is always improving, then eventually, at an indeterminate time in the future, Bitcoin's crypt will be broken (not by brute-forcing, but by a security flaw we've yet to discover.)

However, the great thing about Bitcoin is that it can easily switch to another form of encryption, which I presume will happen before SHA256 is broken.  So even if SHA256 fails, Bitcoin can chug along with the next best encryption.
legendary
Activity: 1988
Merit: 1007


Wow, that's a great image, Smiley. I read through it as well. The problem here is that these laws are still theories and can be broken. Will they? Probably not. But there is still a slight possibility.
legendary
Activity: 1078
Merit: 1003
newbie
Activity: 40
Merit: 0
There is no bitcoin held in hostage. There is a bitcoin waiting to be mined and solved and given out with its 24 friends. But these bitcoins won't be done in only a few years, they will still keep coming till about 2100-2140, depending on how fast our hardware gets.
newbie
Activity: 8
Merit: 0
This does not make any sense - care to elaborate?
newbie
Activity: 16
Merit: 0
Shouldn't take too long to brute force the keys with several pooled ASICs.


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