The State vs. Bitcoin

[genjix]

grains of sand on the earth.
planets in the our galaxy
seconds in the lifetime of the universe/earth
number of people who ever lived.

[ShadowOfHarbringer]

Seriously, like a banker actually worries about every 1 in 10^100 possibility.

Bankers are comfortable with at ATM password of length four digits. If someone finds a card in the street, that gives them a one-in-3333 chance of being able to get money from the card (because you get three tries to enter the password).

By comparison with that, atom-in-universe risks are not worth considering.

Well, to be fair, the number of atom in the universe (10^80) is not a good comparaison.

I just checked, and the total number of addresses is actually much lower.  It's about 1.5*10^48, according to theymos.   It's a huge number, but not as huge as 10^80.  I'll see if I can find an other physical comparaison.

You see ? Told ya. Definately not enough

[grondilu]

You see ? Told ya. Definately not enough

Let's just say it's an other reason always to use a different address for each transaction.  So that in case of a collision, you won't loose all your wallet.

[ShadowOfHarbringer]

You see ? Told ya. Definately not enough

Let's just say it's an other reason always to use a different address for each transaction.  So that in case of a collision, you won't loose all your wallet.

I wonder how difficult would it be to make the number of possible addresses something like 10 ^ 200.

[FreeMoney]

grains of sand on the earth.
planets in the our galaxy
seconds in the lifetime of the universe/earth
number of people who ever lived.

People who ever lived is so tiny compared to 1.5*10^48 (which is smaller than I thought I remembered) being very very generous people who ever lived is still under 10^11. If every person went a different direction and repopulated a new planet with the same number of people as have ever lived here we'd still be under 10^22, so then have all of them do it again, and we're still 1500 times fewer.

[theymos]

UUIDs have 2^128 possible identifiers. They are also designed to be collision-proof. Wikipedia says:

To put these numbers into perspective, one's annual risk of being hit by a meteorite is estimated to be one chance in 17 billion, that means the probability is about 0.00000000006 (6 × 10−11), equivalent to the odds of creating a few tens of trillions of UUIDs in a year and having one duplicate. In other words, only after generating 1 billion UUIDs every second for the next 100 years, the probability of creating just one duplicate would be about 50%. The probability of one duplicate would be about 50% if every person on earth owns 600 million UUIDs.

Compare this to Bitcoin's 2^160 possible addresses. Bitcoin has:
1461501637330902918203684832716283019655932542976 addresses
UUIDs have:
340282366920938463463374607431768211456 identifiers

[ribuck]

The number of addresses is 1.5*10^48. Suppose that ten billion people are generating one address each second. Furthermore suppose I care about bitcoin during my lifetime, and the lifetime of my descendants for the next thousand years.

In that thousand years, those ten billion people will generate 3.2*10²⁰ addresses. So the chance of any given address being duplicated in the next thousand years is one in 4.7*10²⁷.

Every "chunk" of bitcoin can be spent from exactly one address*. So if I owned a billion dollars worth of bitcoins, my statistical risk (i.e. the "expected loss") would be one billion dollars divided by 4.7*10²⁷, which is about 2.1*10^-17 cents.

I can live with that.


*as Bitcoin stands now, with complex multi-signature transactions being unimplemented

[matonis]

You guys are great, but you sure do get off topic pretty quickly. 
;-)
Cheers,

[ribuck]

Sorry matonis, let me bring this thread back on-topic by adding another entry to your list of ways that law enforcement will utilitze bitcoin data.

They will simply get a court order to seize someone's computer. Upon running the bitcoin client they will click "Address Book" where they will find a nicely-tabulated list of bitcoin addresses and names.

[MoonShadow]

Sorry matonis, let me bring this thread back on-topic by adding another entry to your list of ways that law enforcement will utilitze bitcoin data.

They will simply get a court order to seize someone's computer. Upon running the bitcoin client they will click "Address Book" where they will find a nicely-tabulated list of bitcoin addresses and names.

"Yes sir, Officer!  Just have to save this file..."

dev.null > wallet.dat

[ribuck]

"Yes sir, Officer!  Just have to save this file..."

dev.null > wallet.dat

I really don't think you want to type cp /dev/null > wallet.dat in the heat of the moment.

[MoonShadow]

"Yes sir, Officer!  Just have to save this file..."

dev.null > wallet.dat

I really don't think you want to type cp /dev/null > wallet.dat in the heat of the moment.

You're right.

Note to self, code a bash script, call it "Boom"

[matonis]

Sorry matonis, let me bring this thread back on-topic by adding another entry to your list of ways that law enforcement will utilitze bitcoin data.

They will simply get a court order to seize someone's computer. Upon running the bitcoin client they will click "Address Book" where they will find a nicely-tabulated list of bitcoin addresses and names.

Thanks ribuck, but a fully-encrypted hard drive, like http://www.truecrypt.org/ will solve this issue.

Now, I also know that a person in the UK went to jail for "not" revealing his PGP private key password, but i suppose you can always say that you have so many passwords that you forgot.  Also, see similar case "UK teenager jailed for not disclosing password":

http://www.zdnet.com/blog/igeneration/uk-teenager-jailed-for-not-disclosing-password/6372

[hugolp]

Sorry matonis, let me bring this thread back on-topic by adding another entry to your list of ways that law enforcement will utilitze bitcoin data.

They will simply get a court order to seize someone's computer. Upon running the bitcoin client they will click "Address Book" where they will find a nicely-tabulated list of bitcoin addresses and names.

Thanks ribuck, but a fully-encrypted hard drive, like http://www.truecrypt.org/ will solve this issue.

Now, I also know that a person in the UK went to jail for "not" revealing his PGP private key password, but i suppose you can always say that you have so many passwords that you forgot.  Also, see similar case "UK teenager jailed for not disclosing password":

http://www.zdnet.com/blog/igeneration/uk-teenager-jailed-for-not-disclosing-password/6372

I remember reading that some of this system had a two password system. One password would open a phony part made on purpose in case the police or other criminals is forcing you to give them the key. And then the real key would take you to where you have the info.

[grondilu]

Thanks ribuck, but a fully-encrypted hard drive, like http://www.truecrypt.org/ will solve this issue.

Now, I also know that a person in the UK went to jail for "not" revealing his PGP private key password, but i suppose you can always say that you have so many passwords that you forgot.  Also, see similar case "UK teenager jailed for not disclosing password":

http://www.zdnet.com/blog/igeneration/uk-teenager-jailed-for-not-disclosing-password/6372

I remember reading that some of this system had a two password system. One password would open a phony part made on purpose in case the police or other criminals is forcing you to give them the key. And then the real key would take you to where you have the info.

Maybe stenography could also solve this issue.  But I find it difficult to find good doc about that.

[ribuck]

... a fully-encrypted hard drive ... will solve this issue ...

Yes, you will have an encrypted hard drive, but the person from whom you received a payment (and who, unknown to you, is a criminal) will have your name in his address book on his unencrypted hard drive.

[ShadowOfHarbringer]

Sorry matonis, let me bring this thread back on-topic by adding another entry to your list of ways that law enforcement will utilitze bitcoin data.

They will simply get a court order to seize someone's computer. Upon running the bitcoin client they will click "Address Book" where they will find a nicely-tabulated list of bitcoin addresses and names.

Thanks ribuck, but a fully-encrypted hard drive, like http://www.truecrypt.org/ will solve this issue.

Now, I also know that a person in the UK went to jail for "not" revealing his PGP private key password, but i suppose you can always say that you have so many passwords that you forgot.  Also, see similar case "UK teenager jailed for not disclosing password":

Not a problem.
Truecrypt also supports hidden hard drives inside encrypted "standard" hard drives.

This gives You plausible deniability - if asked, You can give the password to Your outer volume, and there is no way of detecting if there is another hidden volume in the outer volume, because the data has enough entropy to look completely random.

So they can't put You in jail for not disclosing password anymore.

[ByteCoin]

I just checked, and the total number of addresses is actually much lower.  It's about 1.5*10^48, according to theymos.   It's a huge number, but not as huge as 10^80.  I'll see if I can find an other physical comparaison.

Well, let's suppose you have a cube of diamond that's 10 metres per side and a computer that can try about 10 million addresses per second. The owner of the computer touches the cube of diamond once in their life so lightly that only one atom is worn away. The owner has a child when they're 26ish who also touches the cube of diamond similarly lightly once in their life etc...
The cube of diamond is completely worn away by the time the computer has exhausted the key space.

ByteCoin