Topic: possible to use up ALL wallet address combinations? - page 2. (Read 4276 times)
We'll eventually run out of addresses. Probably right before the sun bakes the planet dry.
First off, what you think of as an "address" is really a base58 representation of a 160-bit hash plus a checksum. So, there's considerably less possibilities. Only 2^160, or about 1.46 × 10^48. However, that's still pretty big. If you could generate one million addresses per second (most computers can only do 1/1000th of that right now, at best), then it'd still take 4.634391290369428×10^34 YEARS for one person to exhaust the address space. That's besides the fact that we can switch to 256-bit addresses (the size of our current public keys) without any modification to the current protocol.
if wallet address don't ever get recycled, then that means there are only a predetermined set amount of wallet address, just like the amount of bitcoins that's able to be mined. if this is the case, then what happens after all the addresses gets used up? i suck at statistics, but what's the total amount available? let me know if my math is correct/wrong:
34 characters
24 capital letters
25 lower case letters
9 numbers
(24 x25 x9)^34 = about 7.97 x (10^126)?
hmm maybe this should belong in the newbie section
34 characters
24 capital letters
25 lower case letters
9 numbers
(24 x25 x9)^34 = about 7.97 x (10^126)?
hmm maybe this should belong in the newbie section
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