Topic: Thoughts on Satoshis Holdings and Supercomputing - page 2. (Read 414 times)

It's not that simple. There's no way to "protect" vulnerable keys. Once ECDSA is broken, all exposed Bitcoin public keys are at risk. The only fix is to move vulnerable coins to new addresses and implement a new signature scheme like Lamport one-time signatures.

Since the early "Satoshi coins" are unlikely to be moved to safety, some people have suggested forking Bitcoin to make those outputs unspendable, or to recirculate them as mining rewards. Forks like this are unlikely to happen because they are so contentious, so we should be prepared for coins like this to be eventually moved and sold on the market someday.

I can understand you and you have the logic
But you have to consider that if you use supercomputers to crack something, the same supercomputers probably will be at BTC side, protecting the blockchain

Devs and community will keep preserving BTC integrity, no matter what, and they will use the same technology hackers probably will, so...it keeps the same as today

Absolutely. It's a matter of time, but it's very difficult to know when the breakthrough will occur. Right now, it's still all theoretical. I read an insightful and well-sourced article about when ECDSA might be broken by QC, and therefore when the early Satoshi P2PK outputs might be stolen. Read up here. This is an interesting bit:


This only applies to exposed public keys (like many of the early "Satoshi coins") or addresses that have spent outputs before, but that's a significant number of coins.

Well even if a supercomputer appears i think will be hard to crack a private key and get because the algorithm is strong enough so can't be cracked easy, but even if will appear some problems developer of bitcoin will find a solution and supercomputer will not affect blockchain and private keys.

I am intrigue with the possibility of supercomputers with the ability to brute force private keys of bitcoin wallets. I supported one project with deals with quantum computing but rather than destroy bitcoin they will use the technology to protect it (or something to that effect). Will it be a reality one day? Or will it just be another dream that remains a distant dream? Well, only time can tell. However, I am wondering if one day supercomputers can successfully do it, will it not cause chaos and eventually bitcoin will lose its value and its price can plummet? So in the end doing this can be counter productive?

(1) if he was holding all his coins in one address then there wouldn't have been this much speculation! all these speculations are based on making a guess about how many people were mining in first years then guesstimating how many blocks from early years were mined by Satoshi then multiply that by 50 (the block reward of the time) to get his total guesstimated coins.
note that each block that is mined its reward goes to a newly generated address so if we assume 1 million is correct then there are 20000+ addresses involved.

(2) as far as i know the "acceleration of computational speed" has not slowed down, it has stopped a couple of years ago. what they are doing is that they are increasing the number of cores that do the calculation at the same speed as before.
as for the question i can't answer it because it relates to solving the discrete logarithm problem that relates to elliptic curve cryptography and my information is limited on that topic.

The possibility for a supercomputer on the future has a high possibility and if you would look around every update on the OS and windows and programs you can see that the technology is innovating and furthering as the day progresses so a high possibility can really be possible, But forcing your way on anyone else private key cannot be possible if that private key is lost, The security and encryption with the algorithm is very delicate so just brute force, And I never heard of a smart Supercomputer to be brute forcing any secured private key, But I guess if you are talking about mining the other block that is unmined yet Well a normal desktop cannot comprehend with the workload and even with a high GPU and UMD it is not still possible, but with a dedicated mining RIG can mining a block will be a possibility but I guess in accessing a highly Supercomputer like that we already mined the last block for Bitcoin.

I am fully aware this is a highly spekulative topic. So I am not expecting clear answers, but hope to get some input from people that are very familiar with how the speed of super-computers is evolving and expected to evolve over the next 10 - 50 years.
And also hear the opinion of people that have some deeper insights into exploiting hashing algorithm vulnerabilities etc.

I am wondering, if at some point in time over the next decades, it will be profitable (and possible at all), to brute-force one or more of Satoshi private keys.

Here are my thoughts:
- It seems Satoshi is supposed to have 1148800 BTC unspent Bitcoin (are there any newer numbers than from 2013?).
Source: https://bitslog.com/2013/04/17/the-well-deserved-fortune-of-satoshi-nakamoto/
Now, I am not sure, what the largest balance is, that he is holding in one address. If anyone has some date here? This would be our first factor (1).

- Even though the acceleration of computational speed has slowed down due to the fact that lower-and-lower nm technology is physically not possible any more, processors have contunied to get faster over the last years.
The second relevant factor (2) would be, how the evolution of processing speed continues over the next decades to come.
Right now there are already a ton of incredibly fast super computer all around the globe. The thought of a continuing development and the possibility to combine their processing power, gives me the impression that it might not be totally unrealistic to be able to calculate private keys at some point in time. Source: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/TOP500

- Supercomputer and energy to keep them running costs resources / a lot of money. So the last relevant factor would be the price per Bitcoin (3).
We have seen an incredible price development within Bitcoin's first 10 years of existence, so a BTC price of $100k or more seems quite feasible for many, looking at a time span of the next 5, 10, 20 or more years to come.

Now, what I would like to know, if we experiment with different factors for (1), (2) and (3) what are still in a realistic realm (from our current point of view and the date we have today) is it possible to reach a point within the next 10 - 50 years, where brute forcing one or some of SNs private keys will happen, because it's A) possible and B) profitable.
Really interested to hear some reasonable opinions on that topic.

Of course there are things like quantum computers and the possibility of other discoveries that might accelerate the process - but let's neglegt these totally unpredictable factors for now, just to keep this already complex topic a little more realistic.