do you think bitcoins will die out?

[BlueDragon747]

Does anyone know where I can find a calculation of the likelihood of a collision of two randomly generated private keys?

if it was truly random generated then it is simply the size of the bit space of the hash function 2^256 for a single sha256 over ecdsa then - any short cuts the devs have taken to produce those keys in a realistic time frame e.g limiting the curve to reduce the time taken to generate the said key pair, and you would produce a pair not just a private key.

but I think the issues is that no computer can really do true random its always pseudo random like with the "SecureRandom" function in java/android and this has shown that a functions weakness is not in the bit space its in the way it has been implemented

read some of this to get a better idea as this has been asked quite a few times on this forums in more than 1 post/section Gavin has also talked about collisions https://bitcointalk.org/?topic=62.0

but like I have said its not about the function and bit space as 2^256/2^255 is quite secure and if brute forced would take longer than the dinosaurs walked the earth to create a collision

Quote: molecular
"take an average of 1,618,542,460,620,902,128,345,579,373 years to generate a collision"

it is more about how the devs have used said function and if that function has any exploits or weakness that would allow an attacker to shortcut this time

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[Rebelution]

No, you are giving out bad information.

my apologies.  i was just trying to point out that the other miners previous work does not give them advantage over the publisher of the block when a new block is generated.  but to get more technical, isnt the hash function SHA256(SHA256(Block_Header)).  so doesn't that mean that everyone's "dice" effectively changes every block and thus everyone starts over?

[DannyHamilton]

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i was just trying to point out that the other miners previous work does not give them advantage over the publisher of the block when a new block is generated.
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This is true.  There is no progress ever made toward solving a block, so the amount of time spent working on a block in the past gives no advantage or penalty towards the work that will be done now or in the future.

but to get more technical, isnt the hash function SHA256(SHA256(Block_Header)).

Yes.

so doesn't that mean that everyone's "dice" effectively changes every block and thus everyone starts over?

Everyone starts over with every roll they make regardless of whether there is a new block or not.  The dice don't remember the past, and neither does the SHA256 function.