Bitcoin Forum

Would it be principle possible to own all bitcoins?

No, because you still have to remember the Bitcoin in cold storage or on hardware like USB. However, all online Bitcoin could possibly come into your hands.

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.

you didn't explain what your thought exactly is!


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.


you have to create all those addresses + private keys and since there is 2^160 (https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=24268.0) possible bitcoin addresses you will have to continue making addresses until the end of the world.


yes you are wrong.

these is sound greeedy. hahaha. but it is not possible. because all bitcoins is not in online. you cant get that it is in the usb and they store it under the ground as a treasure. hahaha. but nice topic

All the BTC are not in 'a wallet'. They are spread out and a lot are not online or with private keys lost forever. So the answer is NO.

If you'd make your own coin clone then you may be able to achieve that (mine it all by yourself), although I am not certain about the amount in the genesis block. And I don't understand the purpose of this. If you own them all, you just render them useless and with no value.

Whats wrong with you people. The question is "If I have all(!) private keys in my wallet (does not matter where its from), do I controll all bitcoin?" and the answer to that question is yes. Just because you have a number stored on an offline system does not mean I can not have the exact same number stored on my system. The moment I know your secret number (the private key), your coins also belong to me.

Good luck finding a 40564819207303340847894502572032 exabyte disk to store the keys though.

We both know that "guessing" other's private key is practically impossible. So the only way to get it is by stealing it. And THERE the number of offline wallets counts.

But you're right, I could have said it (much) better. And I also mixed it up with a lot of other stuff...

It is absolutely true and it can be obtained by using the wallet blockchain. He gives it to all members and it was very helpful to us in order to supply a service in each transaction. An example is the online store, any store online is definitely using it and it was very helpful to give them no to everyone who orders

It's impossible, everyone will always want to hold some, so you will not own all of them, not to mention that you would need to live up to year 2140 for when all bitcoins are mined, and you would need to somehow find all private keys of coins that are locked forever, and some of them are lost forever (example: hard disk containing bitcoin thrown in the garbage bin for an accident, those hard disks get destroyed in recycle plants so those coins are forever lost)

So to sum it up: nope.

just in theory and even then it would not make any sens.

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.

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.

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 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.

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.

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

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.

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.

Which is possible if you use a system of 000000000000, 000000000001, 00000000002 system, but realistically it won't work and the computing power to go through all of the addresses and see if they have anything in them would probably outweigh whatever profit you could make off of a majority of the addresses with anything in them.

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.

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 people

who 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

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.

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.

how is it possible. i think some time some thing becomes so difficult that we consider it as impossible. so i think it is almost impossible to collect all the wallet key and address to own all the bitcoins of the world.

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

I think he meant to ask if it is possible to have such a online wallet that can hol all 21 million bitcoins in it

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).