Bitcoin Forum

well, since no one knows how much sands out there on this planet, how dare the experts say the numbers of bitcoin address is greater that all sands on earth (or dust over the universe )? How they come up with this conclusion?

It's clearly an exaggeration ti emphasize the point; that there are a lot of bitcoin wallet addresses in the world.
It is an irrelevant point and does not affect the market or the bitcoin network in any way.
Surely, a large percentage of the total addresses would be dormant or inactive.

Bear in mind we can used any words to describe things to understand easily but it doesn't necessary mean it is. Nobody can count sands in this world but we can assume using bitcoin transactions as sands which could possibly mean tremendous transactions.

Check out this image, think a little, then ask yourself again - is it an exaggeration? Of course the vast majority of those are unused, how else? That's what ensures the safety of the addresses.
I don't know about the dust over the universe, but I think that the sand on earth was a good example (although it cannot be counted).

https://talkimg.com/images/2023/05/14/blob054fb5a7c29657cd.jpeg

That is just a representation of 'how much' really means for bitcoin, though one can never actually count the number of sands around the world. 2^160 still is a stagerringly huge number, and relating that number to the number of sands for the number of possible addresses in bitcoin, I think, is not exaggeration but a just comparison between two relatively uncountable things. I know they have placed a definite number to work with in generation of addresses but seriously, who would bother getting all the possible combination anyways?

Well we all know that numbers as well is infinite and there is no end when you count from the negative to the positive value of numbers. There is no sense in comparing the sands on earth or the entire universe to the numbers of bitcoin address because they might as well be infinite. It is like asking to ourselves a question that may not be answered in our lifetime.

I believed the statement which was made by the experts in subject was right, it might be overstatement though but if we look at it very well, it truth and I'm sorry if what I said break your heart because no one can know the actual numbers of bitcoin address. Besides, wallet like electrum, bitcoin core had about 32 addresses and if we account the number of this wallet users around the world not to mention exchanges wallet address we definitely cant know the whole all total numbers of the bitcoin wallet addresses out there.

you are obviously exaggerating, also, a lot of addresses are dormant or forgotten or dumped.

i dont know how many sands on earth, as i know that if you want to generate the same address (to get the same address on second generate) it will very impossible, because ive read an article you need hundred years with the fastest computer right now. so i think it will very impossible to generate same address twice

The point is that wallet collision is basically impossible.  Brute forcing a random key isn't going to happen, you will just waste money on processing power.  If bitcoin was so easy to crack it would be worthless.

I am pretty sure that is completely wrong. As we know, there are around 32 million bitcoin addresses. Accodring to National Public Radio (https://www.npr.org/sections/krulwich/2012/09/17/161096233/which-is-greater-the-number-of-sand-grains-on-earth-or-stars-in-the-sky?t=1550069571974), there are around 7.5 x 10^18 grains of sand. This means that whoever said such bullshit was wrong for more than a billion. Quite a huge mistake, if you ask me. Such comparisons don't make sense anyway, because a grain of sand is nothing and bitcoin address has certain meaning and purpose.

Maybe it is just a representation of bitcoin address that used or exist in crypto space but it is still exagerated to compare it to the sand on earth. Even thought if we think both are infinite because we can't count it but sands is more than anything on earth in terms of numbers and volume. It is not right to say that numbers of bitcoin address is greater than sands on earth.

The statement does not suit right with the term used to describe the number of wallets that were into usage. Every user will be having more than one wallets and upon the same it is not possible to calculate the total number of users in cryptocurrency. More and more Blockchains was under development and those will get interconnected in the future and the same at any cost won't defeat the count of the sand.

There are numerous address that have been forgotten while others were abandon for new ones. Those which were abandon and forgotten should not be counted as active addresses. Bitcoin addresses can also be calculated based on recent transactions from the blockchain which i believe will not be greater than the sand of any continent talkless the whole earth.

There are 32 million addresses WITH a balance.
God knows how many addresses are in wallets with a balance but have never been used.

The OP is talking about the number of possible addresses.

Just over reacting on the issue.
It is not true as there are such less than 20 percent of population of the world is using bitcoin.
And there are few who has 10 or more wallet address. So that is full of exaggeration.

Who are the experts you are talking about, what ever may be the situation, it is really hard to accurately estimate the number of bitcoin address in existence, presumably there are about thirty million active users in the entire market and i am not sure how you can evaluate the amount of wallets in existence and even if the entire billion population starts creating address we will still have more of them available and if there is an address collision we will have a solution for that too with longer bit number, but you cannot compare it with the sands and dusts and from next time onwards, reveal the name of the experts.  :P

It's just how "experts" tend to overly exaggerate their statements on making a point but sometimes they even say things which are not based on facts but only to their views. Just like creating new Bitcoin addresses, new sands can still be formed when rocks go in a process of weathering. Sands are not a finite amount here in Earth so I don't even think Bitcoin addresses can catch up to the number of sands we don't even know yet, even if BTC is mass adapted I don't think they can catch up.

The number of possible bitcoin addresses is absolutely greater than the number of grains of sand on the planet. Current estimates of grains of sand on Earth is in the region of 10¹⁸ - 10¹⁹. Taking the higher end of the estime, log₂10¹⁹ = 63.1. 2⁶³ isn't even remotely close to the number of possible bitcoin addresses at 2¹⁶⁰. The estimates for the number of grains of sand could be out by a factor of billions or trillions, and still not even come close to the number of possible bitcoin address.

Hell, the number of atoms in the world is estimated to be somewhere in the region of 10^50. Log₂10⁵⁰ = 166.1, which is pretty close. In fact, 10⁵⁰/2¹⁶⁰ = 68. So the number of atoms on the planet is only out from the number of possible bitcoin addresses by a factor of around 68.

It's just an expression to make words more expressive. To show that there are a lot of bitcoin addresses. Don't take it literally.

In circumstances were bitcoin addresses are not active(dormant) will they still count them? What of those addresses that passwords have been forgotten? Inconclusiveness the number of bitcoin addresses are not equal to the sand of a continent. My own opinion.

I have no idea about how many wallet that have been generated in bitcoins history and how many unique addresses they have, but I'm sure there's more grains of sand on earth.
Even if bitcoins became the only currency on earth and each transaction would generate 2 new addresses. The number of generated bitcoins addresses would not surpass the number of grains of sand any time soon, and that would probably never happen.

This is so much exaggerated to say that the numbers in the bitcoin address is greater than all sands on earth. If I will say my own opinion to this, this is not so in reality. Truly, the numbers of Bitcoin address is so many to be count on but sand or dust is still greater than this.

Maybe because bitcoin addresses can created easily, even in 1 blockchain wallet for example, there are a lot of address that can generated. It is if for 1 person with any kind of wallet. If all people in this earth generated a lot of addresses it will be a ton of it. But in fact what make it unique is each address  is different. That what make it amazing.

It is simple logic. It is not that the sand and dust have no numbers, but the number is beyond human comprehension. So also is the number of bitcoin addresses. It is not endless, yet the end cannot be comprehended by me and you at this point.

So it is just a logical way of telling you not to bother to imagine the numbers.

I think the key thing to grasp here is that this is just a method to explain to people who does not have the ability to understand the numbers involved with Bitcoin. They can actually see a mental representation of those numbers, if they think of the magnitude of sand that there are on earth.  ;)

Nobody has actually counted the exact amount of sand on earth and I think it will be impossible to do that, but you can imagine the enormity of this number, if you think about the total amount of sand that there might be on earth.  ;)

They are just using the statement as an idiom. That is telling you that there are so many bitcoin addresses because one person may have more than ten or even 20 bitcoin addresses. Just take for instance www.blockchain.com on registration will assign an address to you but on a subsequent transaction, a different address will be assigned to you but both the former and the later are both yours and will be used to receive funds to your wallet.

You are underestimating by just a touch. Our best estimates are that since modern humans first evolved 50,000 years ago, there have been around 110 billion of us on the planet. That means that every human that has ever lived could have started using a trillion new bitcoin addresses every second of every day of every year for the last 50,000 years, and we would have so far used 1.73*10³⁵ addresses, which is somewhere in the region of 0.00000000001% of all possible addresses.

The comparison is obviously an exaggeration but it's all about the number of Bitcoin addresses and not the active/inactive users who uses it. Everything on this earth is countable if we may want to but there are no specific technology that can do it as of this moment and it's pointless to do so.

I'm quite sure and many would also be that estimation is way-way wrong than a huge margin and I don't know what was this expert smoking while making such estimation and also the OP got a topic which is actually not something that important or worth posting here. OP just posted this to maybe try getting some merits by users else this was just a rubbish topic to be posted here in my opinion. No Hate.  ;)

By seeing the fact that every people let say own 10 or even more btc address , that's possible to happen.
The combination between alfhabet and number make it possible.

Will someday bitcoin address will be run out ?
It's possible but in few thousand years ahead !

When I see a legendary member saying something like I'm speechless. Seriously?

Did you bother to read what o_e_l_e_o explained just 3 posts above?



If bitcoin addresses would run out in a few thousand years, at a rate let's say of 3 uses per persons per day and a population of 10 billion, then the Large Bitcoin Collider would have already guessed about half of the privkeys.

Even from 4 digits there are 10,000 different options.This is a combination of only 4 digits. 8).Bitcoin address has from 26 to 35 alphanumeric.Can you imagine how many options there are?I am not good at math, but in principle you can derive a formula and approximately find out how many possible addresses there can be.