Bitcoin Forum

If everyone prepared in advance for the possibility of loss or theft, they could sign their driver's license number (or some other method of identification, even a photo) with their addresses and keep the signature with the company. Then, if they ever lost the address, the person could send their driver's license number to the company, which could then verify the signature with the address.

Otherwise, I can't think of a way, on the spot, to prove ownership of an address you no longer control that would be easy to apply consistently in almost all cases.

If such an organization existed and there was a safe way of doing that, why use a private key or even a blockchain at all? why not verify your identity with the organization and ask them to transfer the funds internally on their own database each time you need to send money?

There really isn't a way to be 100% sure of someones identity. If there was, there would be no illegal immigrants, identity fraud, wanted criminals or missing people in the world.

What if a fraudster steals your drivers license?

On the blockchain, the concept of "ownership" does not apply.

Think of the blockchain as a huge series of glass safety deposit boxes, transparent but impenetrable. Anyone on the planet can go visit these boxes, see what's inside, and even make a deposit to any box (blockchain address) they choose. However, the glass itself is invulnerable to attack.

You either have the (private) keys to a particular box (address) or you don't. The vast majority of boxes (addresses) has only one or two sets of keys, privately held. The keys to some of the boxes have been destroyed, which means you can put money in, but never take it out, sort of like a black hole for wealth.

Some of these boxes (addresses) may have publicly known "private" keys, which is the same as saying they are always "unlocked" for public use. It's probably safe to say nobody will be storing personal wealth in those "unlocked" boxes (addresses in blockchain) anytime soon, but who knows what the future will bring?

HUH? TL;

and of all of that i didnt see a single reply to the question.

You're about a year too late.  ;)

It's already here. See for yourself

http://directory.io/



~BCX~

Well first off, that is far from a complete list, if even 5% of every bitcoin address out there. Second, it is not indexed to be searchable, and 3rd that has nothing to do with the original question of What would be the most ethical, and best way for the make believe person or company to verify that the person requesting access to their lost private key actually owned it in the first place?

tl;dr : you ask the wrong questions. To verify "ownership" (does not exist in a physical sense) of an address you need the private key that belongs to it, so this imaginary database is useless. I know you dont want to hear "not possible", but what else is there to say if there is no other way?


It is complete, its just not a database.


No because that would require an actual database in the background where all the keys are stored. Its generated on the fly. 2¹⁶⁰ possible different private keys, each needs 32 bytes, so "just" ~4.676 * 10⁴⁹ bytes or ~3.868 * 10²⁵ YoBiByte.

Where to begin.....

Lets start with your own math, You say that list is complete and made on the fly, the last page of it has been xxxxxxxxwhatever ending in 75 for a long time now. with 128 keys per page, when calculated to the total number of valid private keys, it barley scratches a few percent. If in fact it were a complete list, then the host of that website would have to have had to invent the worlds largest, and most super efficient hard drive to ever exist, forget the multiplier. 10 to the 25th power YoBiByte's of storage is about 2 to the 118th power more storage than exists on this planet as of january of this year the entire worlds stored data was around 6.8 zettabytes. Anyways, i could spent all day explaining why the list on that website is not complete and could never be. If it were in fact, i could develop a crawler to crawl it in its entirety and have every key from the bitcoinrichlist in my possession within a few months time.

To finish your reply, i guess you missed the HUGE RED FONT where i said this was all a hypothetical and where i also pointed out that "it wont work" which pretty much falls right in line with " its not possible " is an implied state in this scenario

Anyways, back on point.

The point of this is not to debate what is possible, we all already know that generating every bitcoin private key known to man is not possible in our life time. the point of this is as follows one more time for those who missed it in the original post.

What would be the best way of verifying that someone had possession of the private key that belonged to an address they once controlled in the event they lost it. I AM AWARE THERE IS NO MECHANIC FOR THIS IN THE BLOCK CHAIN.

The signed drivers license was a good idea, now lets hear some more ON TOPIC ideas.

You are indeed correct, its only 1.15*10³⁴ of 1.46*10⁴⁸ possible keys. I didnt check that.


Yes, that was the point. Not enough space to store the list, thus impossible to search. Btw each page there is ~60KB in size, with 904625697166532776746648320380374280100293470930272690489102837043110636675 pages thats 5.42*10³³ bytes or ~4.7*10¹⁵ YiB as you allready said yourself thats more than currently is available worldwide.


Hence my: "I know you dont want to hear "not possible","

Anyway, Ill leave your thread to you, enjoy your butthurt.

This has nothing to do with trolling, it is intended to be a constructive thread on ideas on ways a person could prove they owned or at one time managed a particular address at a point in time as they can no longer sign that address. A good example of what this thread was for is the Drivers License idea. It has only become a troll thread because dipshits cant read.

The idea I had in my head which didn't really translate when I wrote the post was for the person's identity to be attached to the address. The way it could work is you send an image of your licence along with your name, contact information and a hash of the driver's license number.

If you lose access to the address, you'd then have to supply the driver's license number, and an image of yourself holding the license. Just in case someone has an image of themself holding their driver's license, the company could require something like a Skype call so they could see the person and compare the photo. The person might have to answer a few security questions as well.

Two possibilities I see here.

1) People could register their address before hand, proving ownership by verifying identity and sending specific amounts in two different transactions to a donation address. If they can send from the address they must own it. Later if they lose it, they could prove their identity and get their private keys back.

2) People could claim a lost address and send coins to it, equivalent to the amount held at the address. Then the claim could be published for maybe 90 days. For example, if I lost the key to an address with 10 BTC,  I would claim the address and send 10 BTC to it. If I don’t own it, the real owner would have 90 days to dispute my claim by spending my BTC.

I remember the first time I heard the word gigabyte. It was an incredible amount of storage space at that time, but now I can buy a 1TB flash drive. This concept does not seem impossible to me at all when thinking about where technology may be in 10 or 20 years.

TT