Nice thread, I'm a treasure hunter myself 
And yes, like everyone here i know is 100x time more possible i end up fucking scarlett johansson than actually finding anything by bruteforcing.
I have however, found some keys with balance using unconventional methods. Thats the key (no pun) to find private keys. Methods come and go (Bruteforced brainwallets for example). Lots of other methods are dead and so will be a lot more in the future, just a matter of innovating!
Right now i thought, for fun, to develop a script to do old school bruteforcing, shooting in the dark without any specific order, just to see what pops up.
I began by running directory.io clone on a vps, modifying it a bit to display keys so a python script can pick them up and compare it with around 2m known addresses with funds. This beta version is doing around 6000 kps (keys per second) so its quite trashy at the moment, as it does around 500m keys per day
Currently modifying it to:
use 100% cpu, its using barely 30% atm. Multiprocessing, etc.
Convert the golang script to python so it can generate/check on the fly instead of retrieving an html page with the keys
Once this is done, modify the script to become a sort of botnet/pool that can check and upload to a server once it opens in a computer.
The funniest thing is that even that way, i wont find anything
!!!
And yes, like everyone here i know is 100x time more possible i end up fucking scarlett johansson than actually finding anything by bruteforcing.I have however, found some keys with balance using unconventional methods. Thats the key (no pun) to find private keys. Methods come and go (Bruteforced brainwallets for example). Lots of other methods are dead and so will be a lot more in the future, just a matter of innovating!
Right now i thought, for fun, to develop a script to do old school bruteforcing, shooting in the dark without any specific order, just to see what pops up.
I began by running directory.io clone on a vps, modifying it a bit to display keys so a python script can pick them up and compare it with around 2m known addresses with funds. This beta version is doing around 6000 kps (keys per second) so its quite trashy at the moment, as it does around 500m keys per day
Currently modifying it to:
use 100% cpu, its using barely 30% atm. Multiprocessing, etc.
Convert the golang script to python so it can generate/check on the fly instead of retrieving an html page with the keys
Once this is done, modify the script to become a sort of botnet/pool that can check and upload to a server once it opens in a computer.
The funniest thing is that even that way, i wont find anything
!!! I then guess you are aware of the Large Bitcoin collider. At the time of writing, running at 673.11 Mkeys/s. They've found a few collisions. The odds are not in your favor, diplomatically.
Pure bruteforcing is a dead end.
Think of ways that significantly reduce entropy is my tip. There are a number of ways. People have posted a few, and I have come up with one or two methods myself. Overall however, mining is still much more profitable than going after dust* bruteforce-stylee.
* Yeah, MOST addresses with a positive balance on the blockchain contain dust, hardly worth the effort.
Using the privkeys our list above gives: