Topic: Would it be principle possible to own all bitcoins? (Read 986 times)
It's not possible to have all the private keys. There are millions of private keys that you could never know and you could never guess them all or even one of them (most likely).
I just got the following thought.
you didn't explain what your thought exactly is!
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If you would find a wallet
what does this mean, you mean searching the internet or other people's computer to find their wallets.
or do you mean finding (creating bitcoin addresses) because a bitcoin wallet is file that is holding the bitcoin addresses + their private keys that your wallet application has created.
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that could hold all bitcoin addresses incl. there Private Keys,
you have to create all those addresses + private keys and since there is 2^160 possible bitcoin addresses you will have to continue making addresses until the end of the world.
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you should have all available Bitcoins in your wallet, or am I wrong? (It's just a theory)
yes you are wrong.
It will be impossible go and own all the bitcoin out there because there is many who have their bitcoins stored or forget their private key so you cant get it all
Hey Guys,
I just got the following thought. If you would find a wallet that could hold all bitcoin addresses incl. there Private Keys, you should have all available Bitcoins in your wallet, or am I wrong? (It's just a theory)
Best regards,
Patrick
Basically, it is indeed possible to get a hold of all the coins that's ever made and will probably be made, with the fact that you contain all the private keys of all addresses that contains bitcoins and will contain bitcoins. You are basically the person who holds ~$11,000,000,000.I just got the following thought. If you would find a wallet that could hold all bitcoin addresses incl. there Private Keys, you should have all available Bitcoins in your wallet, or am I wrong? (It's just a theory)
Best regards,
Patrick
Yea you could but they wouldn't be worth anything if you're the only that has any. For something to have value you need other people to agree that it is valuable, this is especially true in the case of purely digital items. Like if you got a couple of rocks and you think they're valuable, even if no one agrees with you, the rocks still have intrinsic value because you can use them to do stuff. If nobody else has BTC, the coins would be worthless to you as well because you wouldn't be able to use them for anything.
Oh but how much fun you would have squeezing the shorts! Remember back in 1980 when the Hunt brothers tried cornering the silver market? If you own it all, short sellers still have to buy it back to cover their short positions and you can charge them whatever you want...except it didn't exactly work out that way for the brothers. The government stepped in and changed the laws, or the exchange did--I can't remember. So much for free markets.But yeah, there's no real practical purpose for owning ALL the bitcoin.
Hey Guys,
I just got the following thought. If you would find a wallet that could hold all bitcoin addresses incl. there Private Keys, you should have all available Bitcoins in your wallet, or am I wrong? (It's just a theory)
Best regards,
Patrick
Basically, it is indeed possible to get a hold of all the coins that's ever made and will probably be made, with the fact that you contain all the private keys of all addresses that contains bitcoins and will contain bitcoins. You are basically the person who holds ~$11,000,000,000. I just got the following thought. If you would find a wallet that could hold all bitcoin addresses incl. there Private Keys, you should have all available Bitcoins in your wallet, or am I wrong? (It's just a theory)
Best regards,
Patrick
Thought it would be fun to see just how
big of a wallet you would need here.
some ROUGH calculations
- 75 billion address key pairs can be stored using 1 terabyte.
- each terabyte can fit into a tiny hard drive measuring 35 cubic centimeters
(Samsungs' new harddrive that is about the size of a business card and maybe .7 cm thick)
- 1 cubic meter has 1M cubic cm
- 28,571 terabytes per cubic meter.
- 2^160 total bitcoin addresses
- 1.94 * 10^37 terabytes to store all those addreses.
Therefore, your wallet requires 6.8*10^32 cubic meters.
Given that the earth is a little more than 10^21 cubic meters,
your wallet would be the volume equivalent to 680 billion earths.
Holy shit, that puts everything regarding this question in perspective. I have never looked at it in that way before, but I doubt that your math is accurate. You did say ROUGH calculation, so it covers
the odd 80 billion earths you might have had too many.
.... I would like it, if someone could do the math and give us a nice graphical demonstration of this, just to have a single resource for peoplewho do not understand the impossibility of this scenario.
.... The closest I have seen was James's open mailboxes and sand comparison in one of his math explanations. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZloHVKk7DHk
Thought it would be fun to see just how
big of a wallet you would need here.
some ROUGH calculations
- 75 billion address key pairs can be stored using 1 terabyte.
- each terabyte can fit into a tiny hard drive measuring 35 cubic centimeters
(Samsungs' new harddrive that is about the size of a business card and maybe .7 cm thick)
- 1 cubic meter has 1M cubic cm
- 28,571 terabytes per cubic meter.
- 2^160 total bitcoin addresses
- 1.94 * 10^37 terabytes to store all those addreses.
Therefore, your wallet requires 6.8*10^32 cubic meters.
Given that the earth is a little more than 10^21 cubic meters,
your wallet would be the volume equivalent to 680 billion earths.
if you have such a huge amount of money to buy all the bitcion still mined which is all most impossible then certainly you can own all bitcoin. other wise you have no right to own some one's property.
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Thought it would be fun to see just how
big of a wallet you would need here.
some ROUGH calculations
- 75 billion address key pairs can be stored using 1 terabyte.
- each terabyte can fit into a tiny hard drive measuring 35 cubic centimeters
(Samsungs' new harddrive that is about the size of a business card and maybe .7 cm thick)
- 1 cubic meter has 1M cubic cm
- 28,571 terabytes per cubic meter.
- 2^160 total bitcoin addresses
- 1.94 * 10^37 terabytes to store all those addreses.
Therefore, your wallet requires 6.8*10^32 cubic meters.
Given that the earth is a little more than 10^21 cubic meters,
your wallet would be the volume equivalent to 680 billion earths.
I just got the following thought. If you would find a wallet that could hold all bitcoin addresses incl. there Private Keys, you should have all available Bitcoins in your wallet, or am I wrong? (It's just a theory)
All the bitcoin addresses that contain bitcoins (and that have ever contained bitcoins) are listed in the block chain. You just need to get their private keys.
Hey Guys,
I just got the following thought. If you would find a wallet that could hold all bitcoin addresses incl. there Private Keys, you should have all available Bitcoins in your wallet, or am I wrong? (It's just a theory)
Best regards,
Patrick
I just got the following thought. If you would find a wallet that could hold all bitcoin addresses incl. there Private Keys, you should have all available Bitcoins in your wallet, or am I wrong? (It's just a theory)
Best regards,
Patrick
I don't think we can find a wallet that hold all the bitcoin addresses and their private keys included. The one that holds the record of all address is the blockchain and you can browse it thru block explorer but the priv. key isnt in there. You can have a wallet and own the addresses created on that wallet and be secured by priv key you created but you will never own the one created by another person unless he gave the priv. key to you.
I just got the following thought. If you would find a wallet that could hold all bitcoin addresses incl. there Private Keys, you should have all available Bitcoins in your wallet, or am I wrong? (It's just a theory)
All the bitcoin addresses that contain bitcoins (and that have ever contained bitcoins) are listed in the block chain. You just need to get their private keys.
That is right, all of the addresses are listed there he can view any of them he like, but I think he is talking about a wallet which will be connected to almost all of the available bitcoins and he is asking that all of the bitcoins will be at there which transacted with that addresses, which is totaly impossible and bitcoin is not coded like that.
the answer is yes,you'll own all the bitcoin,but the thing is,you need maybe thousands of year to generate all the private keys,and a huge resources,this one that makes it's impossible
I just got the following thought.
you didn't explain what your thought exactly is!
Quote
If you would find a wallet
what does this mean, you mean searching the internet or other people's computer to find their wallets.
or do you mean finding (creating bitcoin addresses) because a bitcoin wallet is file that is holding the bitcoin addresses + their private keys that your wallet application has created.
Quote
that could hold all bitcoin addresses incl. there Private Keys,
you have to create all those addresses + private keys and since there is 2^160 possible bitcoin addresses you will have to continue making addresses until the end of the world.
Quote
you should have all available Bitcoins in your wallet, or am I wrong? (It's just a theory)
yes you are wrong.
he explained his thought in a sentence, you just have to understand the whole sentence and don't separate it so
you could understand the whole idea of the sentence.
OP: well if you manage to get the ones that's in a cold storage then it is possible, but if can't then your
theory will just be a theory.
I would never trust any online wallet and also any bitcoin exchanger out there because they may go to any problem like got hacked, server down, legal issues etc. And if they got any of those problem we can't use our bitcoin and also we may lost all of our bitcoin we have in them. So whatever feature online wallet gives, i will not place all my bitcoin in single wallet or single bitcoin address. For long term holding i prefer paper wallet where as for daily use i use multiple online wallets.
Hey Guys,
I just got the following thought. If you would find a wallet that could hold all bitcoin addresses incl. there Private Keys, you should have all available Bitcoins in your wallet, or am I wrong? (It's just a theory)
Best regards,
Patrick
mentioning "all" already stating the logic yes you can have it all, because you said it., so how come that you will be wrong from your argument? and you are the luckiest man if you will find it from our time. because you can already enjoy the value of this coin. I just got the following thought. If you would find a wallet that could hold all bitcoin addresses incl. there Private Keys, you should have all available Bitcoins in your wallet, or am I wrong? (It's just a theory)
Best regards,
Patrick
Yea you could but they wouldn't be worth anything if you're the only that has any. For something to have value you need other people to agree that it is valuable, this is especially true in the case of purely digital items. Like if you got a couple of rocks and you think they're valuable, even if no one agrees with you, the rocks still have intrinsic value because you can use them to do stuff. If nobody else has BTC, the coins would be worthless to you as well because you wouldn't be able to use them for anything.
I heard it will need more than all the energy of the Sun to just count from 1 to the last number of bitcoin private key. For the "super" computer to do the "-rescan" command, I think it will need many many more 1000 times of energy to do... it is possible but the possibility is considered 0.
just in theory and even then it would not make any sens.
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