Bitcoin address - are there enough for us all?

[HabBear]

Considering that bitcoin addresses get wasted and discarded like plastic bottles of water, is there ever a risk that we'd use up all the bitcoin addresses?

I realize the possible combinations is 36 to the power of 32, but I don't have a way to make sense of the resulting number. How many address are used in a day? How quickly are we going through these possible combinations?

[davis196]

Considering that bitcoin addresses get wasted and discarded like plastic bottles of water, is there ever a risk that we'd use up all the bitcoin addresses?

I realize the possible combinations is 36 to the power of 32, but I don't have a way to make sense of the resulting number. How many address are used in a day? How quickly are we going through these possible combinations?

Maybe in the future there will be a limit of 10 addresses per bitcoin user(or per wallet owner).
I`m familiar with this topic ,but i quess that old addresses can be re-used again,so we will never run out of combinations.

[saocodonls95]

Maybe in the future there will be a limit of 10 addresses per Block bitcoin

[coynedterm]

Considering that bitcoin addresses get wasted and discarded like plastic bottles of water, is there ever a risk that we'd use up all the bitcoin addresses?

I realize the possible combinations is 36 to the power of 32, but I don't have a way to make sense of the resulting number. How many address are used in a day? How quickly are we going through these possible combinations?

Just take an example of the mobile numbers in this world , the most of the countries have mobile numbers digits range between 10-13 digits and they are enough for us and daily we are getting new numbers according to our needs ( new offers in sim ) , so here you can estimate that how we can complete our need with 32 character combination easily .
And in my opinion 100% possible that no one will feel the need of the lack of the bitcoin address .
Second thing is that daily new new users in the internet are coming and daily new VPN services are launching , but still we have no lack of up adress serial numbers and  we are working fine with this , so just chill by leave this problem and enjoy the bitcoin system of variable address .

[BurtW]

Considering that bitcoin addresses get wasted and discarded like plastic bottles of water, is there ever a risk that we'd use up all the bitcoin addresses?

I realize the possible combinations is 36 to the power of 32, but I don't have a way to make sense of the resulting number. How many address are used in a day? How quickly are we going through these possible combinations?

The actual number of possible Bitcoin addresses is 2¹⁶⁰

This number is so large our tiny human brains cannot comprehend it.

There is no need to worry about running out.  We never will.

[xuan87]

There are so many number combination in the address, there capital and small letter plus number, so it will be enough for all of us, and if the address is run out we can simply just add the length of the address, but it will be very long before the address run out of number

[BurtW]

There are so many number combination in the address, there capital and small letter plus number, so it will be enough for all of us, and if the address is run out we can simply just add the length of the address, but it will be very long before the address run out of number

Looking at the encoding of the Bitcoin address may be fun and interesting but, like I said, the actual number of possible Bitcoins addresses is 2¹⁶⁰.

We will never run out.  Do not worry about this.

2¹⁶⁰ is about 10⁴⁸

For comparison the number of water molecules on Earth is about  5 x 10⁴⁶

So there are about 20 times more Bitcoin addresses than molecules of water on Earth.

[noormcs5]

Considering that bitcoin addresses get wasted and discarded like plastic bottles of water, is there ever a risk that we'd use up all the bitcoin addresses?

I realize the possible combinations is 36 to the power of 32, but I don't have a way to make sense of the resulting number. How many address are used in a day? How quickly are we going through these possible combinations?

The actual number of possible Bitcoin addresses is 2¹⁶⁰

This number is so large our tiny human brains cannot comprehend it.

There is no need to worry about running out.  We never will.

We have enough bitcoin addressees and there is no shortage of it. What makes me feel worried is the total number of bitcoins in circulation.If everyone in the world start using Bitcoins it might get out of supply 

[pterodactyl]

There are so many number combination in the address, there capital and small letter plus number, so it will be enough for all of us, and if the address is run out we can simply just add the length of the address, but it will be very long before the address run out of number

Looking at the encoding of the Bitcoin address may be fun and interesting but, like I said, the actual number of possible Bitcoins addresses is 2¹⁶⁰.

We will never run out.  Do not worry about this.

2¹⁶⁰ is about 10⁴⁸

For comparison the number of water molecules on Earth is about  5 x 10⁴⁶

So there are about 20 times more Bitcoin addresses than molecules of water on Earth.

Population growth being what it is, if bitcoin became the only worldwide currency would 2¹⁶⁰ be enough several hundreds of years down the line? According to this UN Report, The population of the world will be around 36.4 billion by 2300. I'm trying to understand there numbers here. Will 2¹⁶⁰ still be enough?

[Amph]

There are so many number combination in the address, there capital and small letter plus number, so it will be enough for all of us, and if the address is run out we can simply just add the length of the address, but it will be very long before the address run out of number

Looking at the encoding of the Bitcoin address may be fun and interesting but, like I said, the actual number of possible Bitcoins addresses is 2¹⁶⁰.

We will never run out.  Do not worry about this.

2¹⁶⁰ is about 10⁴⁸

For comparison the number of water molecules on Earth is about  5 x 10⁴⁶

So there are about 20 times more Bitcoin addresses than molecules of water on Earth.

Population growth being what it is, if bitcoin became the only worldwide currency would 2¹⁶⁰ be enough several hundreds of years down the line? According to this UN Report, The population of the world will be around 36.4 billion by 2300. I'm trying to understand there numbers here. Will 2¹⁶⁰ still be enough?

1.46 x 10^48, basically each person have at his disposal 1.46 x 10^39, they can't even dreaming of wasting so many address, if someone on purpose try to do it each day he/she will not have the meterial time to do it

there are only about 31.000000 second in one years and you have 10^39 to waste, which is 1000000000.000000000.000000000.000000000.000, you need something that can waste at incredible speed of 10^33 for each second of your life, not even a yotta(10^24) is enough

[deisik]

There are so many number combination in the address, there capital and small letter plus number, so it will be enough for all of us, and if the address is run out we can simply just add the length of the address, but it will be very long before the address run out of number

Not all letters and numbers are born equal!

I refer to the fact that some letters and numbers cannot be used in a Bitcoin address. This is done intentionally since a number of letters and a number of numbers can be easily confused with other letters and numbers (e.g. I and l, or O and 0). Regarding the OP's question, some folks even tried to find private keys for Bitcoin addresses which had been used on the blockchain before by generating all addresses. They don't seem to have succeeded, at least we haven't heard about that

According to this UN Report, The population of the world will be around 36.4 billion by 2300. I'm trying to understand there numbers here. Will 2¹⁶⁰ still be enough?

I guess that could be safely called bullshit (or just a waste of money). It is like predicting in 1800 how many horses would be required in 2000

[Iranus]

Yes.  There are so many Bitcoin addresses that the chance of getting the same address twice is zero for any normal purpose, which also pretty much means that the chance of running out of addresses is also zero.  Not that Bitcoin will ever be used by everyone in the world anyway.

[NorrisK]

There are so many number combination in the address, there capital and small letter plus number, so it will be enough for all of us, and if the address is run out we can simply just add the length of the address, but it will be very long before the address run out of number

Looking at the encoding of the Bitcoin address may be fun and interesting but, like I said, the actual number of possible Bitcoins addresses is 2¹⁶⁰.

We will never run out.  Do not worry about this.

2¹⁶⁰ is about 10⁴⁸

For comparison the number of water molecules on Earth is about  5 x 10⁴⁶

So there are about 20 times more Bitcoin addresses than molecules of water on Earth.

Population growth being what it is, if bitcoin became the only worldwide currency would 2¹⁶⁰ be enough several hundreds of years down the line? According to this UN Report, The population of the world will be around 36.4 billion by 2300. I'm trying to understand there numbers here. Will 2¹⁶⁰ still be enough?

Just write down the number 2^160 and you will realize how incredibly huge this is..

As someone said, there are more possibilities than water molecules on this planet. That is insane.

[audaciousbeing]

Considering that bitcoin addresses get wasted and discarded like plastic bottles of water, is there ever a risk that we'd use up all the bitcoin addresses?

I realize the possible combinations is 36 to the power of 32, but I don't have a way to make sense of the resulting number. How many address are used in a day? How quickly are we going through these possible combinations?

I believe there is definitely enough to go round and even the service providers suggested such to be use and its for security reasons aside that, its not compulsory to use every suggested addresses because it will even increase the amount  of transaction fees to be incurred due to aggregating the amount to be sent from various addresses.

[n0ne]

Everything will have a possible solution. Right now everything moves in a right way. So if the bitcoin address seems a drawback then an alternate plans might been made already thinking of the future by the development team. These were minor issues that gets sought easily.

[dinofelis]

Considering that bitcoin addresses get wasted and discarded like plastic bottles of water, is there ever a risk that we'd use up all the bitcoin addresses?

As others pointed out: not really.  

However, the possible number of addresses is not really 2^160, but rather 2^80, and in reality much smaller.  The reason for that is what is called the "birthday paradox".    If you chose 2^80 different addresses at random, out of 2^160, then you start to have a significant probability (several 10%) that two of them are equal.  Which would mean that the private key of the one, also works on the other one.  To make this probability small, one should be a huge factor below 2^80.  Say, 2^50 or so.  That's still of the order of one million billion addresses.  So it is reasonable to limit each human to a few tens of thousands of bitcoin addresses if we want bitcoin to last for a few generations.

This is in fact more limiting than one might think, if one also wants to adhere to "no address re-usage".  It would mean that each of your transactions, in your whole life, would need a new address.  Now that starts to be problematic, because if you do 10 transactions a day, you do 3000 a year, and in 3 years time, you've used up all of your address quota.

But then, we could allow for 2^60 addresses.  That would increase slightly the "collision probability", but it would still be very small (of the order of 1/2^40).  At that point, each human would be entitled to 1000 times more addresses, which would solve the issue.

[clickerz]

There are so many number combination in the address, there capital and small letter plus number, so it will be enough for all of us, and if the address is run out we can simply just add the length of the address, but it will be very long before the address run out of number

Looking at the encoding of the Bitcoin address may be fun and interesting but, like I said, the actual number of possible Bitcoins addresses is 2¹⁶⁰.

We will never run out.  Do not worry about this.

2¹⁶⁰ is about 10⁴⁸

For comparison the number of water molecules on Earth is about  5 x 10⁴⁶

So there are about 20 times more Bitcoin addresses than molecules of water on Earth.

Population growth being what it is, if bitcoin became the only worldwide currency would 2¹⁶⁰ be enough several hundreds of years down the line? According to this UN Report, The population of the world will be around 36.4 billion by 2300. I'm trying to understand there numbers here. Will 2¹⁶⁰ still be enough?

1.46 x 10^48, basically each person have at his disposal 1.46 x 10^39, they can't even dreaming of wasting so many address, if someone on purpose try to do it each day he/she will not have the meterial time to do it

there are only about 31.000000 second in one years and you have 10^39 to waste, which is 1000000000.000000000.000000000.000000000.000, you need something that can waste at incredible speed of 10^33 for each second of your life, not even a yotta(10^24) is enough

That too much number digits a human can imagine. When the time comes this number all use up maybe our descendants are living in nearby planet already or this planet inhabitable already. Nice to know this numbers and analogy.

[maydna]

i think bitcoin address is design to fill every want and even more wallet is enough for people and i am sure that in the beginning bitcoin created, satoshi nakamoto and the team behind bitcoin is considering and thinking about this and i am sure that they are thinking that people in the world is getting increase from time to time and no matter how much people is involve in bitcoin world, the wallet address should be enough for them to cover what they need. so i am really sure that bitcoin wallet is more enough for every people.

[dinofelis]

I guess the day you create that first Bitcoin address and find its exactly the same as one created many years previously.. we have run out.

What are the odds of that?

If there are N addresses on the block chain, the probability of this happening randomly (that is, not done on purpose) is of the order of N^2/ 2^160.

This is why, when N is of the order of 2^80, chances are high that it happened.  When N is of the order of 2^60, chances are of the order of 1/2^40 that it happened.

[LTU_btc]

Wow, I knew that number of possible bitcoin addresses is huge, but never thought that number is higher than water molecules on the earth. It's too big numbers for our brains.
Many people are using new adress for every transaction and also they have generated tons of addresses which hasn't been used ever and will be not used. And still, there will be enough addresses for everyone.
Someone compared it with phone numbers. I think it's wrong. We don't use new phone number for each new call or SMS.