Bitcoin Forum

The title says it all. I was expecting two transactions today, they both happened. About forty five minutes after the last expected transaction I received some coin. I am not sure why, but I think it was a mistake. Is there any way I can return the coin to sender? This particular transaction happened on coinbase. A very surprised e-mail after a night out.

woah what happened? some guys accidentally sent coin to you? maybe you could look into opening a support ticket with coinbase?

I guess it shows how little I know about the network. The coin isn't worth THAT much... just a strange is all.

Hopefully the guy doesnt need it

i guess if you two have the same transaction link you could prove it...

Good guy you are. can not just sent it back to the address that sent you coin?

coinbase uses other addresses to send coin instead of just the user's generated addresses

OP never said anything about him/her using coinbase

This particular transaction happened on coinbase. thats what he wrote though

This happens sometimes.  It is the result of a thing called 'address collision'.  While some stupid bitcoiners think it can only happene once in a blue moon, it is actually not that infrequent.  Computers which generate addresses don't bother to look up whether or not a so called 'new address' has already been generated and used.  When you computer generates a new address, it is totally possible that the address generated was generated previously and used by another person.  The bitcoin protocol doesn't include anything to prevent this.  Stupid eh?

When you got this transaction unexpectedly last night, it was probably just another person trying to make a bitcoin transaction on the same channel (address) that you were using.  This is just like a citizen's band radio where two conversations might occupy the same channel.  In bitcoin, there is no "breaker-breaker 1 - 9 ".  So there you have it: just another address collision.  Nothing at all to worry about.  Send the money back and hope it doesn't happen again.  Actually, the odds are pretty low this could every happen to the same person another time so don't expect to see it again for several years, maybe even more than a decade. It's that rare.  

can this be implemented? it's only gonna get worse as more people use bitcoin?

Yeah, it can be implemented.  Some coders I know are working on a pull request for bitcoin 9.1 which will have a 'previously used address' checking module.  It won't even be difficult.  I estimate about 35 lines of code max.  These guys are talking with Gavin and a few others about how to do it the best way.

It is pretty rare - so don't worry too much about it 'getting worse as more people use bitcoin' - although that is technically correct.

I like how you shrug off an address collision like it's just to be expected.... The odds of this happening are minute.

You would have more chance of getting struck by lightning, while at the same time as getting run over by a bus, then waking up in the hospital to find out you just won the lottery than having an address collision.  

So i guess you are the 'stupid bitcoiner' for not looking at the maths.

Who the fuck are you calling 'stupid'? 

The odds of this happening is not once per minute!  That is bullshit.  It is much more rare than that. 

How did you compute: 'struck by lightning' * 'bus' * 'hospital' * 'lottery'?  Did you look at the 'maths'.  Moron.  You british are always 'looking at the maths'. 

If an address collision happens, it'll be because of poor random number generation.  The probability of random addresses colliding is so ungodly small that it will never happen in the entire life of bitcoin.  The fact that you think it's possible is more demonstrative of the failing of the human mind than the design of bitcoin.  The sheer number of addresses is simply unimaginably large.

You are again showing everyone how stupid you really are....

Firstly, the word 'minute' in that context has a different meaning than obviously your simple brain can compute.

Secondly, I QUOTED YOU for calling people 'stupid bitcoiners' and you take offence??? If you can't take it, then don't give it... You twat.

Someone else back me up here on the MATHS...  



You're a fucktard rawdog.   Is this you???  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qLLRCjGPz_I (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qLLRCjGPz_I)

A bitcoin address does not have a unique private key. A collision would be different private keys resulting in the same public key. There are no known collisions and there never will be.

... No the chance of that happening are nearly impossible... It's more like someone sent .0000001 with a website domain to advertise.

QFT. The sheer number of addresses is simply as unfathomably vast as the universe itself.

There are MANY MAGNITUDES more Bitcoin addresses than there are grains of sand on the Earth.

http://cynic.me/wp-content/uploads/2013/11/bitcoin-laws-of-the-universe.jpg

Why is it you? Ha-ha ;) ;)

I think it's him.

I saw this picture in another thread, this picture is what .

I'm pretty sure it's the sun.  I have taken the text from the image using ocr if it would help anyone who needs to translate it.....


Imagine you built a perfect computer; forget about GHash and Megahertz.

You built a computer which used the absolute minimum amount of energy theoretically possible to record a change in a single bit (1 to 0 or 0 to 1).

We are talking about the limits of thermodynamics; nothing more efficient is even possible.

Now imagine you used most of the natural resources in our star system to construct a dyson sphere and covered the entire surface of this sphere with a single star system sized super computer.

Now imagine you could keep this supercomputer cooled at roughly absolute zero and could do so without expending any additional energy.

If you had that and captured (with no inefficiency or loss) the entire energy output of our star (not just in a day or week but continually until it burned out) you couldn't COUNT to 2^256 before you ran out of energy.

Keep in mind this is simply counting.

Just counting, not hashing, not comparing, not performing lookups just counting 1 .. 2 .. 3 .. 2^256.

These numbers have nothing to do with the technology of the devices; they are the maximums that thermodynamics will allow.

And they strongly imply that brute-force attacks against 256-bit keys will be infeasible until computers are built from something other than matter
and occupy something other than space.

Bitcoin — Your money is secured by the laws of the universe.

Magic Internet Money has appeared for you.

This particular transaction was to my coinbase wallet and only for .010, I guess it is mine now.

http://lmgtfy.com/?q=2%5E128