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Title: theoretically stupid, but bound to happen ... Post by: empoweoqwj on March 29, 2013, 12:37:31 PM What if I send bitcoins to a completely random hash address? By random, I mean not a real address I have selected randomly, just a random value that satisfies the requirements of a bitcoin address.
Will the bitcoins just "disappear"? Any other outcome? As an example of real-life, I could paste a bitcoin address into a send box, but in a drunken stupor or "baby intervention", alter one character before pressing send. What would happen? Title: Re: theoretically stupid, but bound to happen ... Post by: Gabi on March 29, 2013, 12:41:59 PM If you mistype a character, then the address will be invalid and you would not be able to send the bitcoins.
But if you send the bitcoins to a valid address for wich the private key is unknown... yeah well, byebye bitcoins Title: Re: theoretically stupid, but bound to happen ... Post by: empoweoqwj on March 29, 2013, 12:51:15 PM ah great, thanks, that's a green light for the drunken stupors then ;D ;D
Title: Re: theoretically stupid, but bound to happen ... Post by: Gabi on March 29, 2013, 12:55:17 PM Yup, if you only mistype one character or so, the address will become invalid.
Title: Re: theoretically stupid, but bound to happen ... Post by: cbrcs on March 29, 2013, 12:59:20 PM Well someone really lucky might end up with a freshly generated address that already has some coins on it. Right?!
Title: Re: theoretically stupid, but bound to happen ... Post by: DeathAndTaxes on March 29, 2013, 01:08:43 PM Well someone really lucky might end up with a freshly generated address that already has some coins on it. Right?! Possibly however if you by extremely back luck (1 in ~4 billion) mistype an address which actually ends up being a valid but unknown address the most likely scenario is nobody every (not today, not tomorrow, not in 5 billion years when our sun burns out) produces the private key which corresponds to that valid but unknown address. Hint: the odds of someone randomly producing a private key corresponding to that address is the same as the odds of someone producing a private key which corresponds to any known/active address which for all intents and purposes is ~0.0%. Title: Re: theoretically stupid, but bound to happen ... Post by: wifihero on March 29, 2013, 01:13:38 PM Somebody asked me a similar question the other day.
According to https://en.bitcoin.it/wiki/Using_Bitcoin (https://en.bitcoin.it/wiki/Using_Bitcoin), the "Client will refuse to send payment to a misspecified address." There is a checksum in place to ensure the address is valid, so you are unable to send to an invalid address. |