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

There's no such thing as "ungenerated address". All addresses are generated. What counts as "generated" to you, is an address with a known private key. But they all exist, hence are generated. Even LoyceV's shared "burning address" tool, is actually generating addresses; it just skips the private key part and chooses the RIPEMD-160 hash instead of producing it with some SHA-256 hash of the public key.

All Bitcoin addresses exist, and that's the way you should see it. We just don't know who holds the key for which.

Yes, they will be able to get the bitcoins. But it is extremely rare for anyone to generate a duplicate Bitcoin address randomly, because the address is generated with 1^160 probability.

A "non-existant address" in Bitcoin, from a human's perspective, is an address that has never been generated before ever. Now there's no way of actually knowing that somebody somewhere has not generated the same address as someone else, unless it was generated from a weak private key like 1,2,3 and so on, hence why o_e_l_e_o wrote that there's no such thing as non-existant addresses in the Bitcoin network, as nobody can really be sure about that.

There's no way for the sending wallet to know how an address was generated. It could be a "burn waste" address with only a valid checksum, it could be someone created it offline. Either way, it looks the same from the sender's perspective.

You didn't get me, I am not talking about the basic but the process of encoding the addresses which is what I am saying that I don't know how it works because I am not a programmer. Creating of wallet and having the address is not what I mean, but how the programmers generate the addresses is what I am trying to say.

Yes I don't know that bitcoin can stay in the ungenerated address as well. I thought it can only store in the already generated ones. Well thank you for this.

How did you earn 1100 Merit on Bitcointalk without knowing the basics of Bitcoin?

Bitcoin is electronic cash. If you send cash to a random destination, it will stay there until someone finds it.

I don't know how the bitcoin addresses are generated but I believe such thing will never happen and I am saying it from the area of Mobile and bank account numbers generation. In Mobile phone number, if you mistakenly send credit to the number that has not been generated, the credit wouldn't go and this applicable to bank account number, if you send money to an account number that has not been generated, the money will never enter the account number, and the sender bank will even notify you that the account is invalid. But I don't know of bitcoin address, and I don't think the bitcoin will enter the ungenerated address. Someone should put into action and tell us the outcome

I mean, surely any OP_RETURN output can be a vanity output given that you can encode any arbitrary data you want in it. It's just a case of decoding the script in to ASCII characters, which is really no different to when we encode the script to Base58 or Base32 to generate a vanity address.

For example, https://mempool.space/tx/27f9a5ddbee89c7471c4fc6456599d923d60e7d8d83e4ba51bd688f72e3baeca. Counterparty could just have easily had people send coins to an OP_RETURN output called "Counterparty".

I knew that, but didn't realize you can view all transactions to the same OP_RETURN "address" that way too.

True, but I wouldn't expect a Newbie to be looking for such addresses in the first place. Then again, Newbies have been dragged into all kinds of pump and dump schemes. Counterparty was one of those: at current value, people burned $62 million worth of Bitcoin for an altcoin that now only has a $9 million market cap. There's no doubt someone who got rich from it though.

Now all that's missing is a vanity-OP_RETURN

Correct. You can't prove it, so calling it a "proof of burn" is misleading. Coins in burn addresses are not provably burned. Coins in OP_RETURN outputs are.

I disagree.

If a users looks at this transaction (https://mempool.space/tx/d83973b11443e6151ef62f5644e92599c9ec9824b0fc128eeee64903972f2c98), they see coins being sent to a funny looking address, but an address nonetheless. I wouldn't expect a newbie to know that such an address is likely unspendable.
Conversely, if they look at this transaction (https://mempool.space/tx/af0bfe175f4e04a6958984534b4e98a45fd2ea227d321c9c50448ab5250fdcf1), they see coins being sent to something called OP_RETURN which is very clearly not an address. It is much more obvious that something unusual has happened to these coins which means they can't be spent.

Actually, still somewhat easy. If you were to simplify it, Bitcoin addresses are merely hashes of script which defines the spending conditions. They are indexed after evaluating each transaction for the script in their output before tabulating and indexing them. If the usecase is big enough, most explorers would index and keep track of them.

Some blockexplorers have indexed them as well: https://blockchair.com/bitcoin/address/d-30b1cfee5f36b0282531ab681452c910.

Although technically correct, it's at the same level as being unable to prove any given Bitcoin address is secure. It's safe to assume neither you or me will ever know the private key to for instance 1oeLeoxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxzqxUMm.

Just like you can't prove nobody will ever reproduce your private keys. You can't prove it, but you know it will never happen anyway.

Still, that's less obvious to the average user. Seeing 1CounterpartyXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXUWLpVr on a block explorer makes it instantly clear how much Bitcoin was burned wasted. OP_RETURN is less obvious to find.

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Maybe we should call it "proof of waste" instead of "proof of burn".

Except that is not actually proof of anything. It is hope that A) I don't know the private key, which cannot be proven, and B) no one will ever know the private key, which also cannot be proven. If you want a proof of burn, then use OP_RETURN.

You have it backwards. SHA256 of the string comes first, and then RIPEMD160 of the output of SHA256. RIPEMD160(SHA256(string)).

That's probably the best way to burn coins without anyone knowing you've burned them, but it's quite the worst way to do coin burning in general. As already said, these coins aren't actually burned. Spending them would require finding HASH160* collisions; they are perfectly existent with current rules (which have no business to change), even though there isn't evidence of feasibly finding such collisions.

If you want to burn coins, and be certain that they aren't spendable by some future, crazy-genius guy who solved some old, abandoned mathematical problem, just utilize OP_RETURN.

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* HASH160(x) is RIPEMD-160(SHA256(x))

Easier: Proof of Burn generator.

Loads of Bitcoins are sent to addresses which are unlikely for someone to have access to the corresponding private key. Take for example: 1CounterpartyXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXUWLpVr. Counter party burn address which is used to provably burn Bitcoins. The nature of the address makes it highly unlikely that anyone would have access to the private key, notice how the address is intentionally made such that finding a vanity address like that is unpractical.

The way to do it would be vary the checksum at the end to find an address that fits the long prefix and the validity. OP_return is far superior and preferred to be used for burned coins.

I've always thought about this possibilities but it turns at the end in being a theif whether we like the title or not.. there are a lot of paid and free softwares who focus on such stuff but it all depends on how the person define ethical and unethical actions based on his beliefs I do believe that you have bigger chances as you already said earlier you believe in nothing so no limits so far only you who decide your limits   if I have the same freedom as you I would have done a lot of things but no

That's possible right now! Just create a new Electrum wallet, and it gets you 20 addresses, for which it instantly checks the balance. They'll be empty.

It's always fun to do the math though. There are 2^160 potential addresses. Your wallet checks 20. No wait, do better, set up a system for brute-forcing addresses. You're checking 1 trillion addresses per second. For 10 years. There are currently 47,577,222 funded Bitcoin addresses (I'm ignoring the different types, just to make it more likely to find one).
That means there's a 1 in 97407774 trillion (2^160/1000000000000/3600/24/365/10/47577222=) chance of finding a funded address during those 10 years of brute-forcing. Many of the addresses only contain dust, but that doesn't matter, you're just not going to find one.

But what about pirate treasures? I guess there must be thousands of hidden treasures all over the world. But let's take a conservative guess, and only search for the top 10. The earth's surface area is 510072 billion square meter. Now let's pick a random coordinate, and start digging (or diving), to excavate a 1 square meter area. Just pick a spot, at random!
There's a 1 in 51 trillion chance of finding one of the most valueable treasures on the planet. And it's still 1.9 million times more likely than finding some dust in a Bitcoin wallet after brute-forcing at incredible speed for 10 years!
So, instead of thinking about the possibility of finding a funded Bitcoin address, start digging!

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"Luck" is a strange thing: people always hope to get lucky, no matter how small the odds are. But when it's bad luck, even when the odds are much more likely, people expect it not to happen to them.
Ech year, 2000 people are killed by lightning. That means getting killed by lightning is literally trillions of times more likely than finding a funded Bitcoin address.

No, don't do this! Every coin which is sent to such an address permanently bloats the UTXO set that every node on the planet must store. Every node must forever keep a record of those coins in their UTXO set in case they are spent in the future, since no one has any idea what you do not know the private key to this address.

If you want to burn coins, then send them to an OP_RETURN output, which permanently removes them from the supply and does not bloat the UTXO set. It also allows you to prove the coins are burnt, which you cannot do by sending them to an address you have deleted the private key for.

It's also worth mentioning guys, that all the private keys that are generated in the 256 bits range, are in fact all collisions of other same addresses.

That's a nice fact!

Since you are generating your private keys yourself, due to the complications on the private key,it impossible for you to be luck to have the same private keys as that of the address that the coins was sent to. The possibility of it happening is just like saying Jesus Christ will come back on earth to die for us the second time.

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.

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.

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

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.

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.

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.

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  

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

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.

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 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.

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.

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.

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

--Knight Hider

The coin will be lost forever.

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


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.

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!