Limited number of bitcoin addresses

[jackg]

If there are eventually no more bitcoin addresses avaliable as all of them are in use: what will happen to the address, will it increase by a letter or will the old addresses be scrapped and new addresses brought in.
This would be unlikely as there are currently:
(22^36) throught the characters that are currently in use (letters and numbers):
2,124,303,230,726,006,271,483,826,780,841,554,627,491,524,509,696

[Jeremycoin]

I believe that won't be happen fast, cos the address has 33 characters max.
So it's more than enough for human being, maybe even if we're running out of addresses. It will took a long long time (CMIIW)

[jackg]

I believe that won't be happen fast, cos the address has 33 characters max.
So it's more than enough for human being, maybe even if we're running out of addresses. It will took a long long time (CMIIW)

Does the maximum number of addresses increase as all of the previous addresses have been used?

[BurtW]

You must be joking.  I hope you are joking.  This is a joke, right?

[teukon]

If there are eventually no more bitcoin addresses avaliable as all of them are in use: what will happen to the address, will it increase by a letter or will the old addresses be scrapped and new addresses brought in.

Unlike say, IP addresses, Bitcoin addresses cannot be exhausted.  Instead, the Bitcoin address system would become insecure should the total number of used addresses become a non-negligible fraction of the square root of the theoretical maximum.

[TrueBeliever]

It's a newbie asking the question so no I don't think it is a joke.

the short answer is the addresses will not run out.

bitcoin is designed to have far far far more addresses than will every be required.  therein lies its security.

assuming the hypothetical, that there was a collision and you created an address that was already in use then you have direct access to any funds at that address (unspent outputs sent to that public key). However the probability of that happening is so low that it is impossible (see other threads for comparisons to atoms in the universe etc).  We are not talking about winning the lottery odds here, these odds are far far lower, more like winning the lottery in a trillion years type of probability.

Even if only 1% of bitcoin addresses were used up then bitcoin would be considered well and truly broken.

[jackg]

I meant if the maximum is 33 characters and the number on my address created a few days ago caontained 22 then the number of characters must increase to 23 once al of the probabilities for 22 have been used! Otherwise there is no point in setting a maximum to 33.

[TrueBeliever]

I meant if the maximum is 33 characters and the number on my address created a few days ago caontained 22 then the number of characters must increase to 23 once al of the probabilities for 22 have been used! Otherwise there is no point in setting a maximum to 33.

the address in your signature contains 34.  If I remember correctly an address is 33-34 characters long.  There are no 22 character addresses. 

[jackg]

I meant if the maximum is 33 characters and the number on my address created a few days ago caontained 22 then the number of characters must increase to 23 once al of the probabilities for 22 have been used! Otherwise there is no point in setting a maximum to 33.

the address in your signature contains 34.  If I remember correctly an address is 33-34 characters long.  There are no 22 character addresses. 

Sorry; i miscounted the number of charactes in my bitcoin app as they are set into sets of 4 so I assumed there were 5.5 sets instead of the actual 8.5 sets!

[Delek]

We should be more worried about the extinction of human race rather than the limits of Bitcoin Adresses.

[BurtW]

There seems to be some confusion since you are looking at the encoded version of the Bitcoin address.

There are exactly 2¹⁶⁰ possible addresses as long as we keep using RIPE-MD160.

2¹⁶⁰ is 1,461,501,637,330,902,918,203,684,832,716,283,019,655,932,542,976.

We don't have to guess at this by looking at the ASCII encoded values (the human readable form you are seeing).

Do you often worry that someday all of the oxygen molecules in the room you are in will spontaneously drift away from the part of the room you are in and you would die?  After all, that could happen, right?  It is not impossible, right?

That should be a bigger worry for you than running out of Bitcoin addresses.

[jackg]

There seems to be some confusion since you are looking at the encoded version of the Bitcoin address.

There are exactly 2¹⁶⁰ possible addresses as long as we keep using RIPE-MD160.

2¹⁶⁰ is 1,461,501,637,330,902,918,203,684,832,716,283,019,655,932,542,976.

We don't have to guess at this by looking at the ASCII encoded values (the human readable form you are seeing).

Do you often worry that someday all of the oxygen molecules in the room you are in will spontaneously drift away from the part of the room you are in and you would die?  After all, that could happen, right?  It is not impossible, right?

That should be a bigger worry for you than running out of Bitcoin addresses.

I am wondering where you go tthe 2 from in that equation

It is impossible for all of the oxygen to spontaneouly move away from you in a room as there would have to be a less dense particle beneath it, to push it up and it wouldn't do so.

[BurtW]

Because the output of the RIPE-MD160 step in the process that calculates a Bitcoin address is a 160 bit number (hence the 160 in the name RIPE-MD160)

A 160 bit number has exactly 2¹⁶⁰ possible values.

3 - Perform RIPEMD-160 hashing on the result of SHA-256 in the following document:

https://en.bitcoin.it/wiki/Technical_background_of_version_1_Bitcoin_addresses

[teukon]

Sorry; i miscounted the number of charactes in my bitcoin app as they are set into sets of 4 so I assumed there were 5.5 sets instead of the actual 8.5 sets!

Are you now satisfied as far as your original question is concerned?

Do you often worry that someday all of the oxygen molecules in the room you are in will spontaneously drift away from the part of the room you are in and you would die?  After all, that could happen, right?  It is not impossible, right?

It is impossible for all of the oxygen to spontaneouly move away from you in a room as there would have to be a less dense particle beneath it, to push it up and it wouldn't do so.

I imagine BurtW was assuming the many worlds interpretation of quantum mechanics (look up "quantum tunnelling" for more).  Under this interpretation, the conception of air as a collection of particles bumping into one another is only an approximation to the truth.

[BurtW]

Yes true but the real point I was trying to make is that we do not have to worry about running out of Bitcoins addresses because we have 1,461,501,637,330,902,918,203,684,832,716,283,019,655,932,542,976 of them.

[xhomerx10]

There seems to be some confusion since you are looking at the encoded version of the Bitcoin address.

There are exactly 2¹⁶⁰ possible addresses as long as we keep using RIPE-MD160.

2¹⁶⁰ is 1,461,501,637,330,902,918,203,684,832,716,283,019,655,932,542,976.

We don't have to guess at this by looking at the ASCII encoded values (the human readable form you are seeing).

Do you often worry that someday all of the oxygen molecules in the room you are in will spontaneously drift away from the part of the room you are in and you would die?  After all, that could happen, right?  It is not impossible, right?

That should be a bigger worry for you than running out of Bitcoin addresses.

I am wondering where you go tthe 2 from in that equation

It is impossible for all of the oxygen to spontaneouly move away from you in a room as there would have to be a less dense particle beneath it, to push it up and it wouldn't do so.

 Once you master bitcoin and mathematics, you should work on your science fundamentals; specifically those regarding density.  Less dense particles would be pushed up by those of higher density... they would "float" as it were; not the other way around.  Technically that's not what BurtW was getting at anyway.

[unholycactus]

We should be more worried about the extinction of human race rather than the limits of Bitcoin Adresses.

It is indeed more likely for the sun or earth to explode than running out of addresses.

[Yofun]

Everyone is saying we would never run out of addreses. But did you guys forget that one person can create as many as we want?


What if that one person decides to run a script to create new adddresses?

[Yerm]

Everyone is saying we would never run out of addreses. But did you guys forget that one person can create as many as we want?


What if that one person decides to run a script to create new adddresses?

what if that person then started selling those addresses, and the addresses become more valuable than bitcoin itself?
that's a sight to see

[BurtW]

Everyone is saying we would never run out of addreses. But did you guys forget that one person can create as many as we want?


What if that one person decides to run a script to create new adddresses?

Go for it.

No, we did not forget.

It is not just you.  You, me, everyone, as a human beings, cannot fathom how large this number is 1,461,501,637,330,902,918,203,684,832,716,283,019,655,932,542,976.

Take a good look at it and try to comprehend how big it is.