So Electrum seed is 128 bit
12 or 13 words
What are the chances that the same seed is not generated by someone else by mistake?
Its a 128 bit seed, so the chance is 1 in 2
128 or 1 in 3.402823669*10
38.
Electrum seed just consist of English words . Don't you think it would be more secure to just use random letters?because either way we have to write it down.So what's the point of using English words?
The english words are just a different representation of the same thing. The words are the seed, but so is a 128 bit binary number. Its easier for humans to remember words than binary number. Mainly because we are used to use words while we only seldomly use binary numbers.
Don't you think private keys genetation is more secure then seed itself? Even though seed contains other private keys.
So tell me the chances that someone else does not generate the same seed and end up stealing bitcoins?
A private key is a 256 bit number, so one might think its significantly more secure than a seed. However when creating an address the process involves a 160 bit RIPEMD-160 hash. Thus it is assumed that there are 2
96 (because 2
256/2
160 = 2
96) private keys that can spend coins on a given address. Another aspect of private key security is that the underlying algorithm (ECDSA) only offers 128-bit security for a 256-bit. There are no shortcuts AFAIK to the seed.
Using a seed is in the same ballpark of security than just randomly generating keys. A seed however has the advantage that private keys derived from it are deterministic and thus only a one time backup is needed.