What happened when Bitcoin is sent to non existed address - page 2.

Synchronice

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Quote from: o_e_l_e_o on July 23, 2023, 01:29:02 AM

Quote from: Little Mouse on July 22, 2023, 08:18:15 AM

It is possible that people may send Bitcoin to an address which haven't yet created for example. Well, anyone can send Bitcoin to any address (considering correct format). What if the address hasn't been generated yet?

The bitcoin network has absolutely no concept of whether an address has been "created" or not. As long as the address is of the correct format with a valid checksum, then you can send coins to it. I can generate a million addresses on a permanently airgapped computer, and no one in the world except me will know about them.

This is true, there isn't a database where every freshly generated bitcoin addresses are added, so, we can assume that absolutely every address with a correct format already exists. On another hand, I would say that absolutely every possible bitcoin address exists, when generate a new one, you simply acquire keys of that address which has already existed from the very beginning.

Just created a SegWit address on offline device and manually wrote down the generated address on my online computer, here is the address: bc1qyswtdfm8ml0e2n7dwhgyfxjhqjuxhs0ut5almp
Now, check it yourself. Personally, I validated this offline generated address via various tools.

Quote from: Little Mouse on July 23, 2023, 02:30:22 AM

Imagine, I have sent Bitcoin to an address- 15wJjXvfQzo3SXqoWGbWZmNYND1Si4siqA
We don't know if this address has already been created or not but for understanding what I'm trying to know, we assume that the address hasn't been created/generated yet.

In 2050, someone created a Bitcoin wallet and generated an address, coincidentally, the address is the same address which I have sent Bitcoin in 2023. Won't he get the Bitcoin? My bad that I'm still confused despite having two great explanations above. It would be cool if you would explain in theory instead of applying technical terms Cheesy

Edit- I read the reply again and it sound like in theory it's possible if someone is lucky, isn't it?

You should assume that absolutely every address exists, we just haven't found their private keys.
By the way, if you want to burn coins, just create an address and don't save private keys. If I were you, I wouldn't worry that one day someone will discover the private keys of this specific address because chances that one randomly generates this particular address is almost non-existence and so non-existence is the chance of someone successfully brute-forcing that address.

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Quote from: Little Mouse on July 23, 2023, 02:30:22 AM

Imagine, I have sent Bitcoin to an address- 15wJjXvfQzo3SXqoWGbWZmNYND1Si4siqA

You cannot send bitcoin to that address because the checksum is invalid. The network will reject your transaction.

Quote from: Little Mouse on July 23, 2023, 02:30:22 AM

In 2050, someone created a Bitcoin wallet and generated an address, coincidentally, the address is the same address which I have sent Bitcoin in 2023.

Assuming you have sent bitcoin to a valid address, then yes. It will sit there unspent until such a time someone generates the necessary private key to unlock those coins, although if you have simply picked a random address with an unknown public key then the chances of that happening are essentially zero.

Charles-Tim

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I do not know if you just want to have the technical knowledge about this, or you are feeling unsecure about your keys. It is possible that this can happen, but the possibility/luck is something that can not be achievable in this present world. If truly that the world can still exist for billions of years, the world would have been destroyed before this can likely happen.

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Quote from: Little Mouse on July 23, 2023, 02:30:22 AM

Edit- I read the reply again and it sound like in theory it's possible if someone is lucky, isn't it?

There's always a possibility since it's not zero.
Considering the size of the private key range, most people will say that it's impossible since it's really is an extremely low chance which wouldn't happen in trillions of lifetimes.

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Quote from: o_e_l_e_o on July 23, 2023, 01:29:02 AM

Quote from: nc50lc on July 23, 2023, 02:16:16 AM

Maybe I wasn't clear enough in the OP or maybe I couldn't understand exactly what I was looking for because of my barriers in technical side.

Imagine, I have sent Bitcoin to an address- 15wJjXvfQzo3SXqoWGbWZmNYND1Si4siqA
We don't know if this address has already been created or not but for understanding what I'm trying to know, we assume that the address hasn't been created/generated yet.

In 2050, someone created a Bitcoin wallet and generated an address, coincidentally, the address is the same address which I have sent Bitcoin in 2023. Won't he get the Bitcoin? My bad that I'm still confused despite having two great explanations above. It would be cool if you would explain in theory instead of applying technical terms Cheesy

Edit- I read the reply again and it sound like in theory it's possible if someone is lucky, isn't it?

nc50lc

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Quote from: Little Mouse on July 22, 2023, 08:18:15 AM

What if the address hasn't been generated yet? Is it possible that in future someone will be able to generate that address
-snip-
If the funded address has been generated by someone coincidentally/unintentionally, will there be Bitcoins? How lucky would they be if they find Bitcoins out of nowhere lol!

That "luck" also applies to our own bitcoins...

You see, an address isn't reserved for a private key, the ownership isn't solely established by first one to generate the address.
For example, your p2pkh address is based from HASH160 of your public key which is 160bit in size while private keys are 256bit in size which is a lot more.
So technically, someone else's different private key could produce the same hash which means that he can spend your funds.

..but as you can see, no one is lucky enough to find a collision.
Not to mention, generate the same private key from luck.

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Quote from: Little Mouse on July 22, 2023, 08:18:15 AM

It is possible that people may send Bitcoin to an address which haven't yet created for example. Well, anyone can send Bitcoin to any address (considering correct format). What if the address hasn't been generated yet?

The bitcoin network has absolutely no concept of whether an address has been "created" or not. As long as the address is of the correct format with a valid checksum, then you can send coins to it. I can generate a million addresses on a permanently airgapped computer, and no one in the world except me will know about them.

Quote from: Charles-Tim on July 22, 2023, 08:34:25 AM

The coin will be lost forever.

This is not strictly true. The only coins which are truly lost forever are ones which are provably burned and cannot be spent by any means, such as those in OP_RETURN outputs or those behind invalid locking scripts. Coins sent to address with unknown private keys could still be recovered in the future with sufficient advances in computing, especially if the address was generated from a known public key, such as 15wJjXvfQzo3SXqoWGbWZmNYND1Si4siqV which was generated from the public key 020000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000.

Quote from: Zaguru12 on July 22, 2023, 08:56:07 AM

And according to learn me a bitcoin the probability of getting this, is around 4 billion.

For legacy addresses. Segwit addresses are different and their checksum guarantees detection of any error affecting up to 4 characters, with a 1 in a billion chance of failing to detect an error affecting 5 or more characters.

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Quote from: Little Mouse on July 22, 2023, 08:18:15 AM

It is possible that people may send Bitcoin to an address which haven't yet created for example.

I think this where the issue of validity comes into place. If we check there is checksums in all addresses created to check the validity of the address, so a wrongly typed address will definitely not have PKH because the private key isn’t generated yet.

So the checksum won’t tell you maybe the address is correct, but will tell it’s validity. And according to learn me a bitcoin the probability of getting this, is around 4 billion.

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Same chance as finding any other funded address: not gonna happen.

--Knight Hider

Charles-Tim

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The coin will be lost forever.

That is not possible as long as you generate your private key the right way.

Quote from: https://github.com/bitcoinbook/bitcoinbook/blob/develop/ch04.asciidoc

The size of bitcoin’s private key space, (2²⁵⁶ ) is an unfathomably large number. It is approximately 10⁷⁷ in decimal. For comparison, the visible universe is estimated to contain 10⁸⁰ atoms.

For seed phrase, it is not also possible to generate the same seed phrase as long as the seed phrase is 12 words or longer, having 128 bits of entropy or more.

Little Mouse

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Maybe unnecessary questions but there's nothing wrong to know. Other day, I was thinking of something and I was confused when I thought of the title question. It is possible that people may send Bitcoin to an address which haven't yet created for example. Well, anyone can send Bitcoin to any address (considering correct format). What if the address hasn't been generated yet? Is it possible that in future someone will be able to generate that address (not vanity address of course, so no intentional attempt I mean)? If the funded address has been generated by someone coincidentally/unintentionally, will there be Bitcoins? How lucky would they be if they find Bitcoins out of nowhere lol!

Topic: What happened when Bitcoin is sent to non existed address - page 2. (Read 391 times)