Limited number of bitcoin 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?

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.

I suppose your right.


Seeing as there are about 7 billion people in the world according to google.
7000000000
VS
1,461,501,637,330,902,918,203,684,832,716,283,019,655,932,542,976.

But I mean it does not require alot of resources to create addresses. You could probs create like 1000 adddresses per second. Maybe?

But yeah...Highly doubt it.

[BurtW]

You do not have to doubt it as a feeling of some sort.  You can actually know it is impossible using math.

BTW 1000 keys per second is very low.  Here is one guy, just one guy, that can do 40+ million keys per second using one graphics card.

Does it?  Specs-wise, it is a good bit faster than the HD5870.  I can't say I know which specs' changes would best align with vanitygen changes, but it doesn't seem unfathomable.  I'm sure it's not even removely the fastest; but hardware review sites don't generally test against oclvanitygen

I bought the 5870 when the R9s first came out, and it got swept by the HD5870s by about a 50% difference, as it did against the entire HD7xxx series.

 I can get 28MKeys/s with my Sapphire HD7970 and I recently acquired an ASUS Strix GTX 970 which gets 40+MKeys/s with much less power consumption. 

[DannyHamilton]

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there are about 7 billion people in the world
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But I mean it does not require alot of resources to create addresses. You could probs create like 1000 adddresses per second.
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40+ million keys per second
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As BurtW suggests, lets try some math.

7,000,000,000 people

That includes infants, elderly, and technologically inept, but for the sake of this discussion lets just pretend that for some reason EVERY single living human being on the planet are all continuously generating, storing, and tracking 40,000,000 addresses per second for no particular reason.

This means that world wide, there will be:
(7.0 X 10⁹) * (4 X 10⁷) = 280,000,000,000,000,000 addresses generated every second.

Current estimates are that the universe has existed for approximately 13,820,000,000 years.  There are approximately 31,556,900 seconds in a year.

So, there have been approximately:
(1.382 X 10¹⁰) * (3.15569 X 10⁷) = 435,800,000,000,000,000 seconds since the universe came into existence (long before stars, planets, life, or humans even existed).

So, if every currently living human had been continuously generating 40 million bitcoin addresses since the beginning of time, they would by now have generated a total of:

(4.358 X 10¹⁷) * (2.8 X 10¹⁷) = 1.22024 X 10³⁵ bitcoin addresses.

There are a total of a bit more than 1.46 X 10⁴⁸ possible addresses.

This means that after every currently living human being generates 40 million addresses every second since the begining of time, they would only have generated 0.000000000011977165% of all possible bitcoin addresses.

[Next BillGates]

what is this? -> www.directory.io

[DannyHamilton]

what is this? -> www.directory.io

A joke.

http://www.directory.io/faq

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Q: Is this a joke?
A: Sort of.
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Q: So you don't store a database of every single key?
A: No.
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[teukon]

7,000,000,000 people

That includes infants, elderly, and technologically inept, but for the sake of this discussion lets just pretend that for some reason EVERY single living human being on the planet are all continuously generating, storing, and tracking 40,000,000 addresses per second for no particular reason.

Just some fun extra observations:

• In storing the addresses, each person would chew through a new terabyte drive every 20 minutes or so.
• If each address were loaded with a satoshi we would run out of satoshis (owing to the 21 million BTC limit) in less than 100th of a second.

[wlefever]

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there are about 7 billion people in the world
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But I mean it does not require alot of resources to create addresses. You could probs create like 1000 adddresses per second.
- snip -

- snip -
40+ million keys per second
- snip -

As BurtW suggests, lets try some math.

7,000,000,000 people

That includes infants, elderly, and technologically inept, but for the sake of this discussion lets just pretend that for some reason EVERY single living human being on the planet are all continuously generating, storing, and tracking 40,000,000 addresses per second for no particular reason.

This means that world wide, there will be:
(7.0 X 10⁹) * (4 X 10⁷) = 280,000,000,000,000,000 addresses generated every second.

Current estimates are that the universe has existed for approximately 13,820,000,000 years.  There are approximately 31,556,900 seconds in a year.

So, there have been approximately:
(1.382 X 10¹⁰) * (3.15569 X 10⁷) = 435,800,000,000,000,000 seconds since the universe came into existence (long before stars, planets, life, or humans even existed).

So, if every currently living human had been continuously generating 40 million bitcoin addresses since the beginning of time, they would by now have generated a total of:

(4.358 X 10¹⁷) * (2.8 X 10¹⁷) = 1.22024 X 10³⁵ bitcoin addresses.

There are a total of a bit more than 1.46 X 10⁴⁸ possible addresses.

This means that after every currently living human being generates 40 million addresses every second since the begining of time, they would only have generated 0.000000000011977165% of all possible bitcoin addresses.

Thank you for this breakdown, and explanation. I was wondering, but too lazy to do the calculation!  So the number of possible bitcoin addresses is in the quindecillions?

That number really is unfathomably enormous.

[Jeremycoin]

Finally, some people that can explain him about the problem.
I'm waiting for you guys

[DannyHamilton]

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.

No, BurtW's analogy works fine under the conception of air as a collection of particles randomly bumping into one another, and I've used the same analogy many times.

Under the conception of air as a collection of particles bumping into one another, the molecules are effectively moving around randomly.  At any given moment in time, ANY arrangement of those molecules in a given space in has equal probability.  There are MANY such arrangements that involve enough air to be in the immediate proximity of the air holes in your face.  There are very few such arrangements that involve insufficient air to be in the immediate proximity of the air holes in your face.  Is there any thing magical about your face that forces enough air to move to that location?  Or are you simply counting on the extremely high probability that the few random arrangements that could kill you will never happen?

[teukon]

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.

No, BurtW's analogy works fine under the conception of air as a collection of particles randomly bumping into one another, and I've used the same analogy many times.

Under the conception of air as a collection of particles bumping into one another, the molecules are effectively moving around randomly.  At any given moment in time, ANY arrangement of those molecules in a given space in has equal probability.  There are MANY such arrangements that involve enough air to be in the immediate proximity of the air holes in your face.  There are very few such arrangements that involve insufficient air to be in the immediate proximity of the air holes in your face.  Is there any thing magical about your face that forces enough air to move to that location?  Or are you simply counting on the extremely high probability that the few random arrangements that could kill you will never happen?

Ah yes, good point.  I missed that.

Damn.  I'm suddenly very conscious of my breathing.  If I don't sleep well tonight I'm blaming you.

[jackg]

With that nubmer of addresses. My computer would give a prgram running (if it was the only program running that had a higher priority). It would take 463,439,129,036,942.83301740386628494 years running at 2Gh/s

[rjmacarthy]

one quindecillion, four hundred sixty-one quattuordecillion, five hundred one tredecillion, six hundred thirty-seven duodecillion, three hundred thirty undecillion, nine hundred two decillion, nine hundred eighteen nonillion, two hundred three octillion, six hundred eighty-four septillion, eight hundred thirty-two sextillion, seven hundred sixteen quintillion, two hundred eighty-three quadrillion, nineteen trillion, six hundred fifty-five billion, nine hundred thirty-two million, five hundred forty-two thousand, nine hundred seventy-six

This many...

[anonymousx]

Check how impossible it is "for now".
http://www.toxigon.com/brute-forcing-bitcoin-brainwallet/

[BurtW]

Check how impossible it is "for now".
http://www.toxigon.com/brute-forcing-bitcoin-brainwallet/

Nice graph at that site.

[Carlton Banks]

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

An 160 bit number is a sequences of 160 binary digits, expressed as a base 2 number. The 2 comes from the fact that base 2 is the type of number system what's being used. In the mathematics of permutations and combinations, you resolve the number of combinations by taking the number of possibilities in a given position as the mantissa, and the number of positions as the exponent.

Hence, the number of possible combinations given a set of base 2 numbers with 160 positions is 2¹⁶⁰.

[makcik]

We have been taught since childhood that numbers don't end anywhere, they go on till infinity. So, mathematically it's impossible for numbers to get end. So, is in the case of wallet addresses.. And wallet address comprises of alphabets too , so it's currently in near future tough for them to get finished.
But, even though it happens in future, simple solution is increasing or decreasing number of digits. But, currently it's not a matter to really think upon.

[tommorisonwebdesign]

This really isn't a problem and this kind of question would only be asked by somebody who did not take a calculus course in high school. Satoshi probably had this in mind when developing the protocol and as pointed out above, it is mathematically impossible to run out of addresses. Don't worry about it. The developers already thought about it.

[Nancarrow]

This topic has nothing whatsoever to do with calculus. If you meant 'math class', say 'math class'.

While I'm at it, the distribution of particles in a gas has nothing whatsoever to do with the many-worlds interpretation of quantum mechanics, nor in fact with quantum mechanics itself. The old trope of all the gas suddenly coalescing on the left-hand side of the box is a *statistical* phenomenon, not a quantum one.

[knightkon]

I also do not beleive that this will happen any time soon.  Once we are down to the last few hundred million addresses, I am sure they will find some way to recycle them or make it able to sell the addresses from one individual to another.  Just a thought.

[johoe]

I also do not beleive that this will happen any time soon.  Once we are down to the last few hundred million addresses, I am sure they will find some way to recycle them or make it able to sell the addresses from one individual to another.  Just a thought.

The universe is estimated to be 14 billion years.  Lets say it will be there for another 50 billion years.  If you want to exhaust 2^160 addresses, you and every other person on this planet must generate 100 million addresses every picosecond (a trillionth second) until the end of the universe.  And to say what was already said in this thread in other words: once there is enough computing power on this planet to generate all bitcoin addresses, then the current bitcoin address scheme is broken and we need longer addresses.

You can't sell addresses The address is generated from a private key that you choose at random.  You don't want to use an address where someone else generated the private key and has full access to the account.