Hey guys. I've found a private key that matches with a Bitcoin address with funds that I do not own. It is the result to use the passphrase "Bitcoin" in the Brainwallet address generator. The private key is 5KBZytdkzttdedEB7xLom6YnHRCVTNQPUrJiTDJKS7VJUbiX6Di, and the address is 1Q7zx6cUVXDZpAJHgPQwbbZUfTKFFuEV6z.
I've tried to import this key into several wallets, but none of those is able to load the available amount of Bitcoins, so I can't spend them. If you check it in the Blockchain what you find out is that it is full of unconfirmed transactions of 0.00001 BTC. Later on I found this same key in a post talking about spam. Could you tell me what's going on with it? Just curious.
https://brainwallet.org/http://blockchain.info/address/1Q7zx6cUVXDZpAJHgPQwbbZUfTKFFuEV6zBy the way, as this Bitcoins do not belong to me I am not interested in keeping them. I only want to try the Bitcoin system. I guess that posting the private address is a good proof of it.
There is a currently a spam attack on the network. While we "normaly" have up to 6000 transactions waiting for a confirmation durring prime time, we now have over 60k transactions waiting for a confirmation constantly, at least for the last week. The private key you (and others) found was used in the spam attack, among ~100 other keys and possibly more I dont know about. The funds that are associated with those private keys are of 1000 satoshi each.
Now if you want create a bitcoin transaction it consists of inputs which refer to a previously received transaction. In this case you would refer to those 1000 satoshi transactions (~450k have been confirmed a few days ago) that have been received in the past. Each input uses ~180 bytes and the fee one would normaly use is 10,000 satoshi per 1000 byte. As you can easily see you can only use 5 inputs of 1000 satoshi each if you want to stay below 1000 bytes. 5000 satoshi however is considered a low fee and you would not even send any coins anywhere. Thats why these are next to impossible to spend. Some big mining pool is currently working on a clean up AFAIK as they can just put their own TX into their own block. Everyone else cant really do much about this as paying a higher fee would require you to use more inputs which in turn increases the size which again requires a higher fee to have a chance to get a confirmation under the current circumstances.