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[CoinRocka]

Let's assume the average future BTC user will only have a single online wallet.  Won't they be prone to attacks based on the value of their very public wallet balances? 

Obvious n00b is obvious.

[wheatstone]

Could you clarify what you mean by "attack" in this context?

A user might risk becoming less anonymous and even though wallets shouldn't (and most don't) reuse addresses, more measures are required to keep a significant degree of anonymity. Those tools are readily becoming easier to use, however, so I'm not sure how much of an attack vector this will be in the future (see CoinJoin, CoinSwap, mixers, off-chain transactions).

[DannyHamilton]

Let's assume the average future BTC user will only have a single online wallet.  Won't they be prone to attacks based on the value of their very public wallet balances? 

Obvious n00b is obvious.

The proper way to use bitcoin is to generate a new bitcoin address for each and every transaction.  A "wallet" is a collection of one or more bitcoin addresses and the associated private keys.  If a user is lazy and naive enough to use the same exact bitcoin address for every transaction, then yes anyone that ever sends or receives bitcoins to/from them will know exactly how many bitcoins they are holding.  If they are holding a lot of bitcoins, this could make them a target.

[railzand]

Let's assume the average future BTC user will only have a single online wallet.  Won't they be prone to attacks based on the value of their very public wallet balances? 

Obvious n00b is obvious.

let's not.

yes, but because it's online.

newbism is welcomed. just don't use online wallets, and keep asking questions

[Elwar]

Wallets should only be used when you go to spend.

All other times your balance should remain in cold storage.

[medUSA]

Let's assume the average future BTC user will only have a single online wallet.  Won't they be prone to attacks based on the value of their very public wallet balances?  

Addresses with large balances are under "attacks" now as we speak, not very successful so far as far as I know.
Some weak addresses generated from quotes and phases have already been cleared out.
So, this is an ongoing issue since day one.

[mjc]

If there are currently enough addresses that every man, woman and child on the face of the earth can have 100 Billion addresses, why would we ever expect to see people having all their BTC in one place if it poses a risk?

Also, if you calculated the amount of effort take to crack just one address (a public / private key pair), I think you'd realize it was futile.  I believe Bruce Schneider explained that to crack 2048 bit key it would take 10^597 years, a 128 bit key only 10^25.  Even if you could find 10^25 computers or the equivalent then you'd still take a year.  Except we are not using 128 bit keys.

There are 34 characters and  [A-Z,a-z,0-9] (62) characters which means you have 8.73 * 10^60 possibilities.

The easier attack would be to place a Trojan with a key logger on their system to steal their password, as long as they are not using MFA.

[DannyHamilton]

If there are currently enough addresses that every man, woman and child on the face of the earth can have 100 Billion addresses,

I think you might have made an error of several orders of magnitude in your calculation.

100 Billion (on the short scale) would be:
100,000,000,000 (1X10¹¹)

Unless I'm the one who made the mathematical error, there are enough addresses for every man, woman and child on the face of the earth to have approximately:
200,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000 (2x10³⁸)

That would mean you could have 100 Billion earths each with a population identical to this one, and 100 Billion parallel universes each with their own 100 Billion earths, and if all the people on all those earths in all those universes each had 100 Billion unique addresses, there would still be addresses left over.

[tAP]

I have often wondered about this being problematic myself.  Nowadays, sure you know people are rich and have tons of money, but the average person doesn't really have a way to access their information.  With bitcoin, the average person CAN see how much a person has, and if they can link it to a real person a la Dorian Nakamoto style (be it real or imagined), you are going to have issues.

[Timerondsc]

I thought there is only one meaning of the the term "attack"