Topic: What happens if I send coin to an address that is unclaimed? (Read 1727 times)

Yes.  Please keep asking questions.  We were all noobs once upon a time.  Ignore the flames and press on.

Ok, and you are sending a minimum, paying a small fee just for the lulz of it.

*Sort of* like buying a tile with your name on it at your favorite local restaurant... 

You have to send some money to an address in order for it to be "claimed" and appear in the block chain for everyone to see.

Remember ALL the BTC sent to all of these addresses is lost forever.

Check out all the outputs from this transaction:

http://blockchain.info/tx/28ccf29cfcc9f82d42793db770e7c7894d61ccf3d18299f34bda2e54415da287

They read:


There is a bunch of cool stuff written here:

http://blockchain.info/address/12zEQoozpKCWLVfwxusiLEKLPVQ7mQNAnZ

And my favorite (one that I created) is:

http://blockchain.info/tx/bf40e4a1c2546747bc800a085e7145d921a9f402aaf4040c155ff5d0df9cc999

Which reads:

lol

Why is there money in there?

It can't be totally random.  It has to be "legal" (bitcoin addresses have a built in checksum).  But it is easy enough to create a "legal" address without knowing the keys, send some bitcoins to it and they will be lost forever.

Here is an example:

https://blockchain.info/address/1BitcoinEaterAddressDontSendf59kuE

Read the address very carefully - it is very honest.

All of the bitcoins sent to this address are lost forever.

OK!  Question answered.  I find that interesting.  So basically, unless decryption technology takes a huge leap that money is probably effectively "gone" and at the same point I have a good chance of cracking that password with existing technology, there is a good chance that nobody's password is safe, so most probably bitcoin wouldn't be around either.

If I send money to a random unused address it is lost for sure. 

The first is true. All keys and all addresses are predetermined.

The safety of a private key lies in the unimaginably huge number of keys. The chances of someone picking (or guessing) anyone else's private key is incredibly small. That is why if you send bitcoins to an address for which nobody has the private key, those bitcoins are effectively lost forever -- the odds are that nobody will ever guess the key or even pick it randomly.

So to answer your original question.

strictly speaking, The address doesn't exist until after something is sent to it. That being said, the address is simply a public key. The private key (which is what you use to generate the public key) is stored in your wallet.

It's possible that you or someone else could randomly generate the same key pair... unlikely in the extreme however.

Wow I am shocked at how rude some of you are being, this is the newbie section, I'd certainly expect to see some odd, stupid, or obvious questions here.

Fairly new myself, and have read to wiki too, but questions still come up, which is why I am here, and just registered.

tbcoin: your first & second answer I kinda understood, but the way you worded it was sorta confusing.

memvola: ty, that was clear to me. Along with tbcoin's answer it seems fairly clear to me.


This was really uncalled for: YES this is exactly the reason we are here reading the threads and asking questions- we don't have a firm grasp on how everything works just yet!


As a newbie to bitcoins, and the bitcoin economy, I would think you all (experienced users) would want us (newbies) to learn about whats going on, how things work, etc. This comes out as questions for many of us, even after reading the wikis & guides & forums. Isn't the idea to keep this movement & economy growing?

I don't want to be afraid to ask questions, even if some people think it might be a stupid question. If I do happen to ask a stupid question, and ask a follow up, it's because I didn't exactly understand your explanation, no need to get mad!

I am here to learn, and to those of you who do answer these threads in the newbie forums: THANK YOU.
Those of you who come to insult, could you please just try to refrain from commenting.

If you wanna try your luck, the Deep Space Vagabond (windows app) was made for you   Be aware that you would have to be VERY lucky (or there must be an undiscovered weakness in the cryptography routines utilized in Bitcoin) to actually stumble onto a loaded address, but hey, it's cheaper than satoshidice - actually it's free, so at least you won't lose money, just some time

+∞

I think I can do both, not to say I haven't been in the wiki plenty.  I thought I'd try to get a spin from bitcoin users rather than a prefabbed explanation that doesn't answer my rather specific question--I guess that isn't appropriate however.  Since I'm already apparently "breaking all the rules" I'll go ahead and say fuck you outright.

I'll also try to avoid asking questions in the future, making sure to keep all of them to myself.  I'm sure this is what the operators of this forum intended--that existing and established users belittle junior members to keep the forum clear of anything resembling anything but absolute certainty and drivel over already firmly understood topics.

Oh wait no I don't think I will actually, If I have a question and don't see the answer, I'll go ahead and ask it.  You are welcome to avoid my posts in the future however.  
 

Everybody's so tender nowadays.


I think your perspective is influenced by the "account" concept, but there is no harm in thinking of it like that. You can safely assume that all private keys for all addresses are predetermined (although there isn't a one-to-one correspondence that maps addresses to keys). Thinking this way is closer to the fact than thinking they are created somewhere. The fact that they are predetermined does not mean they are known though.

Given an address, there necessarily exists a private key, but it is assumed impossible to compute it using the address aside from trying every possible combination. Giving us the ability to make this assumption is what makes a cryptographic algorithms useful. So, we have functions that makes it easy to calculate A from P, but we don't have the reverse functions that calculate P from A.

The existence of this private key, as you see, is in the mathematical sense. You can indeed come up with an address without knowing the private key and send money to it. No one or no thing will know the corresponding private key. It's not created in the physical realm just because you used that address.

EDIT: wording

no,
tbcoin explained it fine

  so much fail. Go read wiki and inform instead of insulting other people

Taking the time?  You begun your unclear response with an idiotic insult and then fail to see what I am actually asking.  Don't answer questions if you aren't qualified/able/willing to do it without a chip on your shoulder.

You should think about the assuming way you responded to my question (in the newbie section) and quit crying about a deserved sharp response.

Disgusts take the trouble to explain something to an asshole.

Get back when you read some documentation and have a question that has not been answered a thousand times (for people who deserved a response more than you).

When you two are done blowing eachother let me know.  Anyone else see what I am saying here an want to weigh in on it?

NO

Why ask, if you ignore the explanation.


Although it may sound arrogant, now you deserve it
+1