Not to mention that even if you could find addresses, if the block reward went to zero TODAY without a billion people using Bitcoin, even today's minute amounts of transaction fees would still be worth more per cpu/gpu/fpga cycle than if you'd spent that same cycle looking for populated addresses. Given that the same equipment you'd use in such an address search should, because of the similarity of the tasks, be capable of mining as well, it would be more profitable to use that equipment for mining purposes.

See this question on the StackExchange site for a rundown of why brute-forcing private keys (which is essentially what you're describing) is also a no-go.

Given your example of 1 billion users at 10 addresses each:

There are 2^160 or about 1,460,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000 possible addresses
In your scenario, 1,000,000,000 people are using 10 addresses each for a total of 10,000,000,000 possible addresses
10,000,000,000 / 2^160 should yield the probability of a collision occurring
10,000,000,000 / 2^160 = 0.00000000000000000000000000000000000000684

So the chances of a collision occurring in your scenario are approximately 0.000000000000000000000000000000000000684%

See why we don't consider collisions an issue?

Step 1: Find, by sheer chance, leaked IRC log on PasteBin, write up article and promote the hell out of it
Step 2: Get re-blogged by CNN without attribution
Step 3: ? ? ?
Step 4: CNN capitalizes on the biggest media frenzy Bitcoin has ever seen, reaps all the profit.

(Optional Step 5: Hang self in closet with belt?)

Care to cite a source for your FUD?

Sorry I was afk for so long, work has been crazy.

I did get a set of replacement checks and while I don't have any pictures I can say that simply putting an extra holographic sticker on the back absolutely solved the flashlight attack and I haven't found a way to break the new checks yet.

Oh you're so so welcome! We consider it a valuable service to have made your skin a little thicker. The world is, after all, a not-so-nice place and entitled thin-skinned folks like yourself haven't got an "immune system" so to speak to protect you from the true assholes out there. By being a milder version of such assholes, we build up your tolerance before the real douchebags get to you.

YOU'RE WELCOME.

And signed up!

So awesome you guys.

I have been saying for ages that one of the biggest hurdles to getting Bitcoin in every 7-11 and WalMart is the "can't pay my electric bill with it" factor. Now you can pay almost any costs you have with Bitcoin you receive from sales. This opens up the ability of merchants to use Bitcoin like a real currency, which maybe reduces volatility a little.

And it looks like we're falling again, back to #4 already. Was fun while it lasted...

Still, the last 2 hours have made my blog's traffic graphs for the rest of the month look like a flat line. 

Thanks, in the excitement I forgot to post!



#2!!!

Now at #3

My blog post about the BitInstant credit/debit card is currently #4 on HN. Shall we make it #1?



And of course in no way am I selfishly promoting that link because it goes to my blog  

Well I personally count myself in that "clever folk" category, but I also count myself in the "way too lazy to deal with experimental software" and "entirely too lazy to deal with git and a compiler when an executable is available" - either way, the effect is similar 

I'll concede that, given that I had blockchain.info bookmarked and firstbits.com wasn't, but it just further makes the point that "coverage is spotty" for v5 addresses, spotty enough to make them largely unusable.

Oh, and he couldn't get firstbits 3gig right now anyway since firstbits doesn't seem to support those address versions either:



Granted, this is probably erroneous, but it does lend further credence to my "invalid vs unusable" argument.

OK so differentiating between "valid" and "usable" is a bit pedantic IMHO but let's go ahead and change the language we're using anyway. Whether or not they're valid, they're not USABLE. Let's see what happens if we try to send coins to 3DLCRW4v2zcMoWfk8HH95JvMtQgCKhgKYt with some various clients/services:

Blockchain.info wallet:


MtGox withdrawal:


BitcoinSpinner Android Client:


Bitcoin Wallet for Android by Andreas Schildbach:


I haven't had a chance to test with the Satoshi client yet since this is a work PC and I don't (can't) have Bitcoin installed on it, will update when I get home. At the very least I can say at this moment that none of the web-based or Android-based clients support this Bitcoin address version yet, which makes it largely unusable. I suspect that the 0.6.3 Satoshi client doesn't support them without special configuration either. Even if it does, none of the exchanges, eWallets or other services will send to such an address so it would only be usable in the one direction.

I suspect that all the 3* addresses in the blockchain folks are linking to as "proof" are live tests of OP_EVAL using experimental forks.

No, there's not. This has been proven many many times over. If "where there's a will, there's a way" were true, those hippies in the 60s would have successfully levitated the pentagon. There is no way for you to 1) get the privkey for that address without contacting its rightful owner or 2a) get another key to match those firstbits without 2b) changing the algorithm behind firstbits, which you also can't do.

Just give up on the 1gig firstbits man, it is literally an impossibility.

What, exactly, are you going to ask him? If he can change the algorithm that assigns firstbits because you're so super special? It's not a big database that he can just overwrite or something, it's an algorithm that finds the first address in the blockchain matching 1gig* - it's published, widely used and there's a fair chance that even IF firstbits.com would change their copy of the algo just for you, the community would abandon it for another site that adhered to the publicly published standard.

firstbits 1gig is in use, you're not going to change the algorithm, you're not going to brute force the privkey, just choose a different target and move on with life. It's gone man, it's gone.