Bitcoin private keys are 256 bit long. That means, there are 115792089237316195423570985008687907853269984665640564039457584007913129639936 (1.15*10^77) possible private keys.
Say you are using a bitcoin miner that’s roughly 4x as fast as the curretly fastest one at 1PH/s (1*10^15), they you’ll need roughly 1*10^62 seconds or 3*10^54 years.
Lets say you got a million of these miners, then you are down to 3*10^48 years, or 2*10^38 times as long as the universe has existed.
I was going to calculate how much electricity this would consume and how expensive it would be, but the answer to that is plainly “too much to imagine”.
I was going to calculate how much electricity this would consume and how expensive it would be, but the answer to that is plainly “too much to imagine”.
Purely hypothetically speaking, but, what if someone had their own private Dyson Sphere generating electricity? (Asking for a friend.)
The sun outputs 3.9*10^26 W. If you captured all that energy with 100% efficiency, you would need 1.3*10^36 hours or roughly 1*10^22 times the age of the universe to collect enough energy.
That’s incidentally roughly the estimated number of stars in the universe.
So if you put a dyson sphere around every star in the universe, right after the big bang (ignoring that stars didn’t form instantly after the big bang) and you ran them until today, then you’d have just about enough energy to crack one wallet with current tech.
I hear this a lot but I don’t put any confidence behind it. This argument suggests that one day we’ll be able to brute force into lost wallets when we can break the encryption. Who knows how far in the future that will be.
But if I recall correctly, Bitcoin’s protocol is consensus driven. If there is an imminent threat of quantum computing, the developers could just improve the code base to resist it. Or fork the protocol to one that is resistant (Bitcoin 2). Then it’s up to 51% of the Bitcoin node operators to adopt the protocol. As soon as 51% of them upgrades, you immediately stop the threat.
I think the only reason Bitcoin is around is for two reasons: speculation, or the persons that actually believe it’s decentralised hard money free from control. I’d like to believe that there are a ton of people out there that run the BTC nodes to keep it decentralised. If there is an update that will resist quantum computing, I’m sure they’ll be eager to immediately upgrade their nodes and secure the network and those wallets. At least that’s how I believe it works, it’s been years since I first began researching it.
As an aside,
Bitcoin isn’t for me because I hate the environment impact. I hope one day it will become green, because it’s never going to go away. But I don’t blame the people that believe in it. In a world where the rich own everything and control the rules, these people are trying to opt out I guess - use a form of money that can’t be easily controlled or censored. Granted it’s all based on speculation, and whenever we run out of Bitcoin is probably when the system will become useless. Spending is discouraged when you run out of coins, so I don’t know how the Bitcoiners defend that argument. So definitely not for me.
Edit, on mobile so fixed some typos and clarified the 51% attack.
This sounds fishy.
What if somebody found out the private key for those accounts? Like, brute forced them?
Is it even technologically possible?
Bitcoin private keys are 256 bit long. That means, there are 115792089237316195423570985008687907853269984665640564039457584007913129639936 (1.15*10^77) possible private keys.
Say you are using a bitcoin miner that’s roughly 4x as fast as the curretly fastest one at 1PH/s (1*10^15), they you’ll need roughly 1*10^62 seconds or 3*10^54 years.
Lets say you got a million of these miners, then you are down to 3*10^48 years, or 2*10^38 times as long as the universe has existed.
I was going to calculate how much electricity this would consume and how expensive it would be, but the answer to that is plainly “too much to imagine”.
Purely hypothetically speaking, but, what if someone had their own private Dyson Sphere generating electricity? (Asking for a friend.)
The power consumption would be 5*10^62 Wh.
The sun outputs 3.9*10^26 W. If you captured all that energy with 100% efficiency, you would need 1.3*10^36 hours or roughly 1*10^22 times the age of the universe to collect enough energy.
That’s incidentally roughly the estimated number of stars in the universe.
So if you put a dyson sphere around every star in the universe, right after the big bang (ignoring that stars didn’t form instantly after the big bang) and you ran them until today, then you’d have just about enough energy to crack one wallet with current tech.
deleted by creator
I hear this a lot but I don’t put any confidence behind it. This argument suggests that one day we’ll be able to brute force into lost wallets when we can break the encryption. Who knows how far in the future that will be.
But if I recall correctly, Bitcoin’s protocol is consensus driven. If there is an imminent threat of quantum computing, the developers could just improve the code base to resist it. Or fork the protocol to one that is resistant (Bitcoin 2). Then it’s up to 51% of the Bitcoin node operators to adopt the protocol. As soon as 51% of them upgrades, you immediately stop the threat.
I think the only reason Bitcoin is around is for two reasons: speculation, or the persons that actually believe it’s decentralised hard money free from control. I’d like to believe that there are a ton of people out there that run the BTC nodes to keep it decentralised. If there is an update that will resist quantum computing, I’m sure they’ll be eager to immediately upgrade their nodes and secure the network and those wallets. At least that’s how I believe it works, it’s been years since I first began researching it.
As an aside, Bitcoin isn’t for me because I hate the environment impact. I hope one day it will become green, because it’s never going to go away. But I don’t blame the people that believe in it. In a world where the rich own everything and control the rules, these people are trying to opt out I guess - use a form of money that can’t be easily controlled or censored. Granted it’s all based on speculation, and whenever we run out of Bitcoin is probably when the system will become useless. Spending is discouraged when you run out of coins, so I don’t know how the Bitcoiners defend that argument. So definitely not for me.
Edit, on mobile so fixed some typos and clarified the 51% attack.
deleted by creator
It’s possible but not plausible. It’s incredibly unlikely that’s what happened.