A question to the bitcoin "hackers".

[DiscoverCebu]

What would you to hack a private key(with a portion of it known to you) if say it took 40 years to hack a wallet with many bitcoins? And in 39 years there would be an invention of a computer that could do it in 1 year. Would you start brute-forcing now or would you wait until the invention of the better computer?
P.S:Oh btw, tell me if this is not the right board for this discussion.

[Morecoin Freeman]

I am on the price speculation forums?

[Zorrocoin]

What would you to hack a private key if say it took 40 years to hack a wallet with many bitcoins? And in 39 years there would be an invention of a computer that could do it in 1 year. Would you start brute-forcing now or would you wait until the invention of the better computer?
P.S:Oh btw, tell me if this is not the right board for this discussion.

This is a rather uncanny question. Firstly, I would rather do something else if it would take me 40 YEARS to hack a wallet with many bitcoins lol . Secondly, even if thiis situation were to happen , I would continue my 40 th year  rather than risking my 39 years for a computer that turns out dysfunctional.

[Qoheleth]

As a reminder: as of the current state of the art, 40 years is nowhere near the right time horizon for cracking a wallet that was generated in a secure way. Even Tianhe-2, the most powerful supercomputer in the world, would take hundreds of thousands of years.

I mean, it's still an interesting hypothetical - plays into a lot of classic economic allocation questions - but I want to make sure you realize that it's not a realistic one, for the moment.

[Wilhelm]

First of all it depends on what the computer costs...
Second it doesn't matter.

Once Bitcoin is hackable within a specific period of time it will be fundamentally flawed...
Currently you need thousands of years to crack it...

Workaround would be to do what most secure wallets already do and that is move all money to a new wallet every transaction.
This protects the public key from getting exposed. Since the public key is only published with an outgoing transaction.

Then again if SHA256 is hackable, Bitcoin would be 100% flawed since you can hack an account based on the account number ....  

[Amph]

First of all it depends on what the computer costs...
Second it doesn't matter.

Once Bitcoin is hackable within a specific period of time it will be fundamentally flawed...
Currently you need thousands of years to crack it...

Workaround would be to do what most secure wallets already do and that is move all money to a new wallet every transaction.
This protects the public key from getting exposed. Since the public key is only published with an outgoing transaction.

Then again if SHA256 is hackable, Bitcoin would be 100% flawed since you can hack an account based on the account number ....  

i can be sure that in the remote case of that possibility, we can change our algo in time, long before it will happen, but this will not come without pain, because mining at that point would be a very big industry, and they can't simply sell all their miners to buy new asic that work with a new algo

we can assume that bitcoin would be screwed if that will ever happen....

[DiscoverCebu]

As a reminder: as of the current state of the art, 40 years is nowhere near the right time horizon for cracking a wallet that was generated in a secure way. Even Tianhe-2, the most powerful supercomputer in the world, would take hundreds of thousands of years.

I mean, it's still an interesting hypothetical - plays into a lot of classic economic allocation questions - but I want to make sure you realize that it's not a realistic one, for the moment.

Ok hearing all of the interesting comments you guys have put here, and all about SHA256 being unhackable and all. I would like to change the question a bit. Say you have some hint say, 2/3rd or some portion of the private key is known to you. And you would need 39 more years to find out(brute-forcing) the rest. 

[freebit13]

Ok hearing all of the interesting comments you guys have put here, and all about SHA256 being unhackable and all. I would like to change the question a bit. Say you have some hint say, 2/3rd or some portion of the private key is known to you. And you would need 39 more years to find out(brute-forcing) the rest. 

... and in 38 years 11 months and 29 days; he moves the coins to a new wallet 

[DiscoverCebu]

Ok hearing all of the interesting comments you guys have put here, and all about SHA256 being unhackable and all. I would like to change the question a bit. Say you have some hint say, 2/3rd or some portion of the private key is known to you. And you would need 39 more years to find out(brute-forcing) the rest. 

... and in 38 years 11 months and 29 days; he moves the coins to a new wallet 

The hypothetical situation is getting complicated by the minute. Well now that you have told it. Say its a lost wallet, and you somehow got a portion of the private key.

[Omikifuse]

I would just move around and look for other ways of earning money.

40 years is too much, even if I can earn millions with a good probability.

[RodeoX]

Your going to be bummed out when your target changes his password 30 years from now.

[DiscoverCebu]

Your going to be bummed out when your target changes his password 30 years from now.

Ok hearing all of the interesting comments you guys have put here, and all about SHA256 being unhackable and all. I would like to change the question a bit. Say you have some hint say, 2/3rd or some portion of the private key is known to you. And you would need 39 more years to find out(brute-forcing) the rest. 

... and in 38 years 11 months and 29 days; he moves the coins to a new wallet 

The hypothetical situation is getting complicated by the minute. Well now that you have told it. Say its a lost wallet, and you somehow got a portion of the private key.

Yeah I added another condition, say its a lost wallet.

[NUFCrichard]

Your going to be bummed out when your target changes his password 30 years from now.

Ok hearing all of the interesting comments you guys have put here, and all about SHA256 being unhackable and all. I would like to change the question a bit. Say you have some hint say, 2/3rd or some portion of the private key is known to you. And you would need 39 more years to find out(brute-forcing) the rest. 

... and in 38 years 11 months and 29 days; he moves the coins to a new wallet 

The hypothetical situation is getting complicated by the minute. Well now that you have told it. Say its a lost wallet, and you somehow got a portion of the private key.

Yeah I added another condition, say its a lost wallet.

So a wallet containing lost Bitcoins, but a good portion of the private key is known, would you try to brute force it if it would take 40 years?

NO! It would be futile, 40 years of computing time would probably take more than 40 actual years anyway. Then what if Bitcoin hard-forks to a new encryption in the mean time? Or if it is worthless in 40 years?

IF it was 1 year it would be possible for someone to think about it, but 40 years is far too long, I would be over 70 by the time the code was cracked, I'd rather just live my life normally and not worry about it.

[Wilhelm]

Ok hearing all of the interesting comments you guys have put here, and all about SHA256 being unhackable and all. I would like to change the question a bit. Say you have some hint say, 2/3rd or some portion of the private key is known to you. And you would need 39 more years to find out(brute-forcing) the rest.  

... and in 38 years 11 months and 29 days; he moves the coins to a new wallet  

The hypothetical situation is getting complicated by the minute. Well now that you have told it. Say its a lost wallet, and you somehow got a portion of the private key.

Well *ahem* if you have a good portion of the private key then grab dem coins!!!.

But I doubt people will put in 40 years of effort. You'll be old and shit...

[Odalv]

Trying to brute-force is more difficult and time consuming than actually mining. => You will earn MUCH MUCH MORE by mining.  You can brute force 1,000 years and in the end you will not found a single satoshi.

[Odalv]

[glub0x]

You can't brute force and say "in 40 years it is done". You will try and try again and every time you fail, the next try will have a little more chance to work out... If for some reason you know that with your computer running 40 years, you will get the coin then every year you got 1 chance over 40 to get the coins...

So let's say there is 4000 bitcoin in this wallet and running your computer cost you 50 bitcoin per year, the maximum it'll cost you is 2000 bitcoins, and after only 10 years you will already have 25% chance to win some nice jackpot...

Note that if you run the computer 38 years without success then you will have success either the year 39 ( win ) or you will loose everything ( as the other computer will win). So this last year you SHOULD play, you will have one chance over 2!