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Author Topic: Sending coins to offline address or nonexisting address  (Read 2339 times)
Balcerek (OP)
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December 07, 2010, 09:49:20 PM
 #1

Hi

what happen if i send coins to offline address or a addres that doesn't exists?
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MoonShadow
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December 07, 2010, 09:54:41 PM
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Hi

what happen if i send coins to offline address or a addres that doesn't exists?

If you send coins to a valid address, the blockchain will record that address as having those coins until they are spent by someone with a keypair that matches that address.  Realisticly speaking, if you send coins to a valid address that has no real owner, they will sit in the blockchain for much longer than our natural lifetimes and cannot be recovered by anyone, even if you can prove that you own them.  If you send coins to someone who is offline, the blockchain doesn't care that they are not online, and their client will see the new transactions the next time that they are online.

"The powers of financial capitalism had another far-reaching aim, nothing less than to create a world system of financial control in private hands able to dominate the political system of each country and the economy of the world as a whole. This system was to be controlled in a feudalist fashion by the central banks of the world acting in concert, by secret agreements arrived at in frequent meetings and conferences. The apex of the systems was to be the Bank for International Settlements in Basel, Switzerland, a private bank owned and controlled by the world's central banks which were themselves private corporations. Each central bank...sought to dominate its government by its ability to control Treasury loans, to manipulate foreign exchanges, to influence the level of economic activity in the country, and to influence cooperative politicians by subsequent economic rewards in the business world."

- Carroll Quigley, CFR member, mentor to Bill Clinton, from 'Tragedy And Hope'
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December 08, 2010, 01:53:47 AM
 #3

Offline: no problem, they now have access to the coins whenever they want

Invalid: the client won't send them.

Valid, but no one has the key: lost forever

A typo won't lose coins because there is a checksum to test validity, multiple very unlucky typos could lose coins though.

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December 08, 2010, 02:45:55 AM
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Ooh, so someone could attack the network by generating coins and posting them to deliberately broken addresses?
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December 08, 2010, 02:51:17 AM
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Ooh, so someone could attack the network by generating coins and posting them to deliberately broken addresses?

That would be a self attack, we don't need all 21M coins. 2M or even .02 total coins would be fine.

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December 08, 2010, 02:52:59 AM
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Ooh, so someone could attack the network by generating coins and posting them to deliberately broken addresses?
The attacker would require a lot of computer power to generate the vast majority of remaining bitcoins. It seems like an unlikely scenario.

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bitplane
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December 08, 2010, 03:02:26 AM
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One of my friends (well, a friend of a friend) runs code on racks of servers containing boards which host masses of GPUs for fluid dynamics calculations for the oil industry, not sure how much these systems cost, but they are available to industry and are as powerful as several thousand high end graphics cards.

Banks could easily afford them
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December 08, 2010, 03:09:48 AM
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Wait, computer power can be bought in bulk? This changes everything.  Roll Eyes

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FatherMcGruder
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December 08, 2010, 04:34:02 AM
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One of my friends (well, a friend of a friend) runs code on racks of servers containing boards which host masses of GPUs for fluid dynamics calculations for the oil industry, not sure how much these systems cost, but they are available to industry and are as powerful as several thousand high end graphics cards.

Banks could easily afford them
So, the evil banks invest in super computers just to horde bitcoins? Where's the profit in that?

Use my Trade Hill referral code: TH-R11519

Check out bitcoinity.org and Ripple.

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1Hio4bqPUZnhr2SWi4WgsnVU1ph3EkusvH
jib
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December 08, 2010, 05:26:16 AM
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Ooh, so someone could attack the network by generating coins and posting them to deliberately broken addresses?

That would be no more damaging to the network than someone just generating coins and keeping them.
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December 08, 2010, 05:34:24 AM
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Ooh, so someone could attack the network by generating coins and posting them to deliberately broken addresses?

That would be no more damaging to the network than someone just generating coins and keeping them.

It would be comparable to someone buying gold and launching it into the Sun.  It would make the remaining gold more valuable while making the rich idiot less rich.  Not only would that not harm the bitcoin economy in any way, it would actually improve the blockchain security for as long as the wealthy idiot could keep it up.

"The powers of financial capitalism had another far-reaching aim, nothing less than to create a world system of financial control in private hands able to dominate the political system of each country and the economy of the world as a whole. This system was to be controlled in a feudalist fashion by the central banks of the world acting in concert, by secret agreements arrived at in frequent meetings and conferences. The apex of the systems was to be the Bank for International Settlements in Basel, Switzerland, a private bank owned and controlled by the world's central banks which were themselves private corporations. Each central bank...sought to dominate its government by its ability to control Treasury loans, to manipulate foreign exchanges, to influence the level of economic activity in the country, and to influence cooperative politicians by subsequent economic rewards in the business world."

- Carroll Quigley, CFR member, mentor to Bill Clinton, from 'Tragedy And Hope'
Balcerek (OP)
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December 08, 2010, 12:25:55 PM
 #12

Valid, but no one has the key: lost forever

lets say that i change last number in the address for example form 6 to 7 accidentally, the address will be valid.
and then send all my savings to this nonexisting address, i am broke because of one small mistake.
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December 08, 2010, 12:39:14 PM
 #13

correct,
that's how cash works, if you give all your fiat-paper-money to some random guy on the streets, your broke too, cuz you did (by mistake or not).

the only little difference is, that the random guy will be quite happy to have some more cash,
with a valid but non-existant btc-address the cash is just lost in space,
but i guess that doesnt matter on your side.

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December 08, 2010, 01:02:05 PM
 #14

Valid, but no one has the key: lost forever

lets say that i change last number in the address for example form 6 to 7 accidentally, the address will be valid.
and then send all my savings to this nonexisting address, i am broke because of one small mistake.

No, the address won't be valid anymore, there's a built-in checksum

BitLex
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December 08, 2010, 01:15:36 PM
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ahh, yes true, shame one me.   Cheesy
just tried it and it didnt work.

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December 08, 2010, 10:01:58 PM
 #16

Valid, but no one has the key: lost forever

lets say that i change last number in the address for example form 6 to 7 accidentally, the address will be valid.
and then send all my savings to this nonexisting address, i am broke because of one small mistake.

I did say this in the post you quoted:

A typo won't lose coins because there is a checksum to test validity, multiple very unlucky typos could lose coins though.

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ribuck
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December 08, 2010, 10:13:37 PM
 #17

A typo won't lose coins...

The typo I'm worried about is when I omit the dot and send 1234 coins instead of the 12.34 that I meant to send.
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December 08, 2010, 11:03:53 PM
 #18

A typo won't lose coins...

The typo I'm worried about is when I omit the dot and send 1234 coins instead of the 12.34 that I meant to send.

Yeah, that could happen. It might be bad, but not as bad as going to a non existent address. In many cases you will have contact with the person you are paying and can get it back.

Eventually someone will probably create a warning add-on that makes you click again when you send above a certain fixed amount or above 10x your average send or something like that.


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davout
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December 09, 2010, 08:40:01 AM
 #19

A typo won't lose coins...

The typo I'm worried about is when I omit the dot and send 1234 coins instead of the 12.34 that I meant to send.

Yea but that has nothing to do with bitcoin

ribuck
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December 09, 2010, 11:23:56 AM
 #20

Eventually someone will probably create a warning add-on that makes you click again when you send above a certain fixed amount or above 10x your average send or something like that.

That would be nice. It will protect me from when the cat sits on the keyboard and accidentally sends all of my BTC. Or from when I think I'm connected to the test network and I'm really connected to the main network.
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