Topic: Limited number of bitcoin addresses - page 2. (Read 5284 times)

No, BurtW's analogy works fine under the conception of air as a collection of particles randomly bumping into one another, and I've used the same analogy many times.

Under the conception of air as a collection of particles bumping into one another, the molecules are effectively moving around randomly.  At any given moment in time, ANY arrangement of those molecules in a given space in has equal probability.  There are MANY such arrangements that involve enough air to be in the immediate proximity of the air holes in your face.  There are very few such arrangements that involve insufficient air to be in the immediate proximity of the air holes in your face.  Is there any thing magical about your face that forces enough air to move to that location?  Or are you simply counting on the extremely high probability that the few random arrangements that could kill you will never happen?

Finally, some people that can explain him about the problem.
I'm waiting for you guys

Thank you for this breakdown, and explanation. I was wondering, but too lazy to do the calculation!  So the number of possible bitcoin addresses is in the quindecillions?

That number really is unfathomably enormous.

Just some fun extra observations:

• In storing the addresses, each person would chew through a new terabyte drive every 20 minutes or so.
• If each address were loaded with a satoshi we would run out of satoshis (owing to the 21 million BTC limit) in less than 100th of a second.

A joke.

http://www.directory.io/faq

what is this? -> www.directory.io

As BurtW suggests, lets try some math.

7,000,000,000 people

That includes infants, elderly, and technologically inept, but for the sake of this discussion lets just pretend that for some reason EVERY single living human being on the planet are all continuously generating, storing, and tracking 40,000,000 addresses per second for no particular reason.

This means that world wide, there will be:
(7.0 X 10⁹) * (4 X 10⁷) = 280,000,000,000,000,000 addresses generated every second.

Current estimates are that the universe has existed for approximately 13,820,000,000 years.  There are approximately 31,556,900 seconds in a year.

So, there have been approximately:
(1.382 X 10¹⁰) * (3.15569 X 10⁷) = 435,800,000,000,000,000 seconds since the universe came into existence (long before stars, planets, life, or humans even existed).

So, if every currently living human had been continuously generating 40 million bitcoin addresses since the beginning of time, they would by now have generated a total of:

(4.358 X 10¹⁷) * (2.8 X 10¹⁷) = 1.22024 X 10³⁵ bitcoin addresses.

There are a total of a bit more than 1.46 X 10⁴⁸ possible addresses.

This means that after every currently living human being generates 40 million addresses every second since the begining of time, they would only have generated 0.000000000011977165% of all possible bitcoin addresses.

You do not have to doubt it as a feeling of some sort.  You can actually know it is impossible using math.

BTW 1000 keys per second is very low.  Here is one guy, just one guy, that can do 40+ million keys per second using one graphics card.

I suppose your right.


Seeing as there are about 7 billion people in the world according to google.
7000000000
VS
1,461,501,637,330,902,918,203,684,832,716,283,019,655,932,542,976.

But I mean it does not require alot of resources to create addresses. You could probs create like 1000 adddresses per second. Maybe?

But yeah...Highly doubt it.

Go for it.

No, we did not forget.

It is not just you.  You, me, everyone, as a human beings, cannot fathom how large this number is 1,461,501,637,330,902,918,203,684,832,716,283,019,655,932,542,976.

Take a good look at it and try to comprehend how big it is.

what if that person then started selling those addresses, and the addresses become more valuable than bitcoin itself?
that's a sight to see

Everyone is saying we would never run out of addreses. But did you guys forget that one person can create as many as we want?


What if that one person decides to run a script to create new adddresses?

It is indeed more likely for the sun or earth to explode than running out of addresses.

 Once you master bitcoin and mathematics, you should work on your science fundamentals; specifically those regarding density.  Less dense particles would be pushed up by those of higher density... they would "float" as it were; not the other way around.  Technically that's not what BurtW was getting at anyway.

Yes true but the real point I was trying to make is that we do not have to worry about running out of Bitcoins addresses because we have 1,461,501,637,330,902,918,203,684,832,716,283,019,655,932,542,976 of them.

Are you now satisfied as far as your original question is concerned?


I imagine BurtW was assuming the many worlds interpretation of quantum mechanics (look up "quantum tunnelling" for more).  Under this interpretation, the conception of air as a collection of particles bumping into one another is only an approximation to the truth.

Because the output of the RIPE-MD160 step in the process that calculates a Bitcoin address is a 160 bit number (hence the 160 in the name RIPE-MD160)

A 160 bit number has exactly 2¹⁶⁰ possible values.

3 - Perform RIPEMD-160 hashing on the result of SHA-256 in the following document:

https://en.bitcoin.it/wiki/Technical_background_of_version_1_Bitcoin_addresses

I am wondering where you go tthe 2 from in that equation

It is impossible for all of the oxygen to spontaneouly move away from you in a room as there would have to be a less dense particle beneath it, to push it up and it wouldn't do so.

There seems to be some confusion since you are looking at the encoded version of the Bitcoin address.

There are exactly 2¹⁶⁰ possible addresses as long as we keep using RIPE-MD160.

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

We don't have to guess at this by looking at the ASCII encoded values (the human readable form you are seeing).

Do you often worry that someday all of the oxygen molecules in the room you are in will spontaneously drift away from the part of the room you are in and you would die?  After all, that could happen, right?  It is not impossible, right?

That should be a bigger worry for you than running out of Bitcoin addresses.

We should be more worried about the extinction of human race rather than the limits of Bitcoin Adresses.