Bitcoin Forum

It is my understanding that bitcoin wallets are created through a hash table with 64 bits of alphanumeric characters. What happens when all wallets are completely used up? What happens then? Just a curiosity question.

In all likelihood the universe will have ended thousands billions of years before anyone (or any group) could generate them all.

And if they did in some alternate reality with different laws of physics, they'd just be reused.

If it ever looked like it was a physical possibility, doubling the length would change that.

It IS possible for one person to generate every single private key for all addresses, but this would take more than billions of years to do. There are limited amount of bitcoin address yes but when this happens it will be MUCH longer time from now.

This is more appropriate:

https://i.imgur.com/ag3KQ0L.png

Your understanding is incorrect. There is no hashtable involved anywhere, and Bitcoin addresses have 160 bits of data.

Just have to stop by and say how awesome it is that people with incredible inside knowledge and understanding like gmaxwell just stop by and help answering questions from people who are new to Bitcoin. Awesome!!!

thank you for the correction.

that's not possible as there are over 2^160 possible addresses

it would take a huge amount of time, which is impossible for any human, maybe some alien technology in the future can make it possible

I guess you are talking about bitcoin addresses and not wallets. Given the number of addresses possible, it is unlikely to happen when mankind rules.  :)
There are so many addresses that the probability of an identical address being generated by 2 users is almost zero. That should happen long before all addresses are used up.

There are too many bitcoin addresses that can be generated. Generating them all requires a computing power that's never been heard of before, and can be possibly invented after millions of years from now. It is possible, but is very improbable at the current time frame.

Chart couple posts above should end this discussion.
There is more bitcoin addresses than all grains of sands in all beaches of the world

This is really mindblowing. Bitcoin will survive until universe explodes.

That's pretty damn cool. Not gonna lie. Anyways, thanks for the response guys. Appreciate the education.

it will take yearssssssss to generate all possible BTC address but just in case, maybe they can add atleast 1 character to it :)

If I were you I won't be bothered at all as the possibility is so low. Too low, like almost zero probability to have the same address owned by two different person. Even in advancement in computing power for years to come it will take a whole lifetime for things like that to happen.

It is practically impossible for one to generate all the addresses available without a few thousand hardware from the future (few hundred years). Why would someone even want to try it? It would just be a waste of resources.

would it be possible that a fork brings us way more addresses and still let us use our current ones?

i don't think it will done ever
even if someone setup system to generate a lot of new addresses automatically then it will take them hundreds of the years or more

What's f**cking Zeptometre and Yoctoseconds :-\

bitcoin wallet has generate automatically with numeric and mathematic system
thats why its revolutioner

Just some rarely used SI prefixes. "zepto-" stands for 10^-21 and "yocto-" stands for 10^-24.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Metric_prefix#List_of_SI_prefixes

wow! why do we even need that shit!
Too much for me . :-\

I believe the op didnt mean what if we now exploit and use up all addresses, but rather in future, since we all imagine that bitcoin will still exist then.
With advancement of technology, i ackgnowledge the scenario where it is possible for some advanced computing to create this problem.
But what u fail to realise is that bitcoin will also advance, and will walk around any issue we may have, and for now its impossible for that to be a problem

cheers

No advnced computers can bring up such a problem as of now

Awesome :)

Highly unlikely think to happen. We'll probably won't be here to see it anyway.

who knows , someone might be able to create a revelutionary computer and fk us all :>

Read what i wrote before commenting please. I did not say that there can be problems with this issue now.
I said that in the future (you you know how fast computer industry is evolving?) its quite possible that some issues like this may come to light.
Ofc, bitcoin will adapt and counter anything that prooves itself to be a problem, nothing is hard-coded. (xcept 21 mill coins limit)

cheers

So, I reuse an address, and then the other person with that private key scoops out my coins?

Not like there is the remotest possibility of that happening, but...

Based on the Moore's law, computer's speed will not double anymore after at most 2020 which it would then grow at a slower rate. I don't see this happening in the future since it would require a lot of power and cooling if such a machine is built.

You can change anything in the protocol if you do a fork but that would require everyone in the network to switch to the version you created. You can technically change the 21million BTC limit or anything else but the whole network needs to agree or a fork will happen.

It will be exciting to see if Moore was right or not. I tihnk he isn't right tho.. we'll see technology still doubling for a while.

Sorry i missed it! :)
Yeah no one's bringing down our btc
All hail the community :D

Lucy could do it if you have seen the movie :-\

So basically the address will last long enough for all user right ?

Interesting question with even more interesting responses.  From what I have gathered from this thread it isn't going to happen in the lifetime of the currency.  Which is good!   ;D

I think that's unlikely. The amount of energy needed would be huge, even with the most advanced computing.

The Landauer limit is a theoretical limit of energy consumption of a computation. It holds that on a system that is logically irreversible (bits do not reset themselves back to 0 from 1), a change in the value of a bit requires an entropy increase according to kTln2, where k is the Boltzmann constant, T is the temperature of the circuit in kelvins and ln2 is the natural log(2).

If someone want to do the math...

I don't think that it will be going to happen.

You might be careful with posting in multiple threads with very small posts that don't add much and having something in signature, it's kinda asking for a ban.

If anyone want's to see how many wallets there just try to do a vanity address. You will see how many address's you generate if you are using GPU's.  And getting one depending on how many variables can be very very hard.

I use cold address's and sleep safe at night not worried about someone getting my address.

is practically impossible, there may be only after thousand years

Vanity addresses are largely dependant on luck. Even though math says it's 1 day, it might just take 1 hour or 1 week. If a collision does happen, your cold wallet won't save you. It could also be compromised if the RNG used is weak.

I think we can think about it after hundreds of years :D
The available adresses are uncountable

after some thousands of years if an alien civilization with thousands of quatrillions of inhabitants invades earth and adopts BTC as official currency.

if such scenario would be feasible even after thousands of years,  I think most of addresses would have been bruteforced by now