Who is sending to 1111111111111111111114oLvT2?

[amaclin]

I see a lot of transactions which send small amounts to
https://blockchain.info/address/1111111111111111111114oLvT2
Seems to me that this is some kind of burning btc for proving something
Which service does this ?

[1714931171]

1714931171

[1714931171]

1714931171

[1714931171]

1714931171

[1714931171]

1714931171

[1714931171]

1714931171

[Lauda]

You're asking a weird question here. Are you not aware that Bitcoin is pseudo-anonymous? How could somebody know who's sending from random address X to address Y? This is an example of a 'bogus' address; i.e. you send Bitcoins there if you want to 'destroy' them. Read more: How to destroy bitcoins?.

[ProfessionalGoogler]

Uhhhhhhhhh.. weird that is a lot of BTC.

Surely no one actually owns this address.

[amaclin]

I mean that some public service uses this address as burning address like
1CounterpartyXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXUWLpVr Proof-of-Burn
http://counterparty.io/news/why-proof-of-burn/

May be you know more. So, I am asking here

[--Encrypted--]

I mean that some public service uses this address as burning address like
1CounterpartyXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXUWLpVr Proof-of-Burn
http://counterparty.io/news/why-proof-of-burn/

May be you know more. So, I am asking here

which services does that? (in case you forgot you asked this in OP.)

[netplus]

oh

Hash 160    0000000000000000000000000000000000000000

 

[netplus]

also

https://blockexplorer.com/address/1111111111111111111114oLvT2

[amaclin]

Hash 160    0000000000000000000000000000000000000000

This is not a problem
Take zero-hash, and convert it to a bitcoin-address
You will get a valid address to send funds but you will not be able to withdraw funds from it

[pereira4]

There are a lot of weird people with a lot of BTC out there OP... we will never find a logical explanation for that. Maybe they are reading this thread right now and having a laugh at your confusion, and that's why they do it. Or maybe they are just simply and legitimately moving coins there because they all belong to the same owner and he wants to store all the coins on the same address which is pretty stupid specially when the address is so recognizable. Yeah I cant find an explanation.

[unamis76]

The answer to your question is pretty simple: folks sending coins there are people who do not value their Bitcoins.

[European Central Bank]

I'm curious about these burn addresses. Is there a verifiable way of knowing that the private keys are lost? Sounds like a beautiful long con to me.

[U2]

If you look through a few pages you can see most transactions are BTC0.00025 BTC0.00000625 or BTC0.001. I'd have to assume a lot of these are the same person/people (recently anyways).

[BitcoinHodler]

I'm curious about these burn addresses. Is there a verifiable way of knowing that the private keys are lost? Sounds like a beautiful long con to me.

the private keys are not lost.
there are no private keys for these addresses to be lost. these addresses are created without private keys.

there is no way in hell someone can create a (custom) bitcoin address with all the computing power in the world combined.

[trinaldao]

I see a lot of transactions which send small amounts to
https://blockchain.info/address/1111111111111111111114oLvT2
Seems to me that this is some kind of burning btc for proving something
Which service does this ?

no people know it
  same thread
other

Hash 160    0000000000000000000000000000000000000000

This is not a problem
Take zero-hash, and convert it to a bitcoin-address
You will get a valid address to send funds but you will not be able to withdraw funds from it

so no people can send this money? this bitcoin  

[RussianRaibow]

I'm curious about these burn addresses. Is there a verifiable way of knowing that the private keys are lost? Sounds like a beautiful long con to me.

The "proof" that nobody has the private key is in the public address itself.  The possibility of someone generating an address (from the private key) that starts with 21 ones is practically 0.

[European Central Bank]

I'm curious about these burn addresses. Is there a verifiable way of knowing that the private keys are lost? Sounds like a beautiful long con to me.

The "proof" that nobody has the private key is in the public address itself.  The possibility of someone generating an address (from the private key) that starts with 21 ones is practically 0.

Ok. You'll have to hold my hand a little here. Don't all addresses have a private key somewhere along the line? I assumed that someone generated it, ended up with a private key and then declared it destroyed.

Sounds like you're saying that isn't possible. Can you explain it a little more?

[amaclin]

OK, I've found the answer myself.
https://www.reddit.com/r/btc/comments/41hktz/alert_some_one_is_doing_stress_test_again_lots_of/?
https://github.com/blockstack/blockstack-server/wiki/FAQ

[Hugroll]

its just people trying to destroy bitcoin, they do this by sending to an address that no one has the private key for. although i don't understand why they would do that lol.

[Mickeyb]

Ok. You'll have to hold my hand a little here. Don't all addresses have a private key somewhere along the line? I assumed that someone generated it, ended up with a private key and then declared it destroyed.

Yes the address does have a priv key, but it isn't available/known to anyone. This post should explain it better than me:

You can't just make up an address by typing in whatever you want or even by typing in whatever you want from the allowed characters.  The address must meet certain mathematical requirements, but you can make an address that mostly looks like what you want and then finish it off by calculating for those mathematical requirements.  I'm sure this is explained much better in the thread I linked to in the first reply to the OP.

Technical version: The address I added in the first reply in the OP ends with f59kuE.  That isn't just random gibberish the first person to send to that address made up.  All or part of that is the checksum (mathematical verification that the address is valid).  The checksum is what prevents you from making something up completely, and it exists primarily to prevent accidental spends to typo addresses (it isn't technically required, but because it exists, it is extremely unlikely that you can type an address wrong and send coins).  The address also must only contain valid characters as defined by base-58 encoding, which prevents that particular address from being all caps (uppercase o and i are not allowed in base-58).

[DannyHamilton]

I assumed that someone generated it, ended up with a private key and then declared it destroyed.

You start by generating the private key.

Then you calculate the public bitcoin address from that private key.

The results of that calculation are completely unpredictable, so for any given private key the resulting address will be one of 2¹⁶⁰ possible bitcoin addresses, and which address it will be is completely unknown until you calculate it.

So, if you start by wanting a specific address, all you can do is keep trying different private keys and see if the resulting bitcoin addresses match the address that you want.  Since each private key has a 1 in 2¹⁶⁰ chance of being the address that you want, you have a 0.0000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000684% chance of finding the private key for that specific address each time you try.

You have a better chance of winning a major national lottery (such as the PowerBall in the U.S.) multiple times in a row than you do of starting with a specific desired bitcoin address and stumbling on the correct private key in your lifetime.