Please take this $16,600,522 before the government gets it...

[Leehoya]

I guess its a pro getting so much popularity for a bitcoin address, alot of small spams increases the bitcoin amount.

[1715009123]

1715009123

[1715009123]

1715009123

[Mitchell]

Let all the miners collaborate in a vanitygen.

[jerelimZ]

To all the people saying 2^256, please know that it's actually 2^160 to brute force a bitcoin address.  You don't need to find the exact private key, you just need to find another key which collides with the hash to form the same address.  Did you know that for any given bitcoin address, you can expect there to be roughly 2^96 different public keys which are valid for that address.. and so you just need to generate *one* of them to be able to spend from that address.

2^160 is 1,46e+48. Good luck even if you bruteforcing 1000s of top addresses with dedicated asic units and your own power plant 

[niniyo]

To all the people saying 2^256, please know that it's actually 2^160 to brute force a bitcoin address.  You don't need to find the exact private key, you just need to find another key which collides with the hash to form the same address.  Did you know that for any given bitcoin address, you can expect there to be roughly 2^96 different public keys which are valid for that address.. and so you just need to generate *one* of them to be able to spend from that address.

2^160 is 1,46e+48. Good luck even if you bruteforcing 1000s of top addresses with dedicated asic units and your own power plant 

Yeah.. it's impossible.. hence why bitcoin is secure.  I just get annoyed when I see people incorrectly saying that brute force requires 2^256 work.  You are *not* searching for a specific private key, because you don't even know the user's public key.  You are trying to generate a keypair which, when hashed, collides with their bitcoin address, thus allowing you to spend from it.

[NewLiberty]

To all the people saying 2^256, please know that it's actually 2^160 to brute force a bitcoin address.  You don't need to find the exact private key, you just need to find another key which collides with the hash to form the same address.  Did you know that for any given bitcoin address, you can expect there to be roughly 2^96 different public keys which are valid for that address.. and so you just need to generate *one* of them to be able to spend from that address.

2^160 is 1,46e+48. Good luck even if you bruteforcing 1000s of top addresses with dedicated asic units and your own power plant 

Yeah.. it's impossible.. hence why bitcoin is secure.  I just get annoyed when I see people incorrectly saying that brute force requires 2^256 work.  You are *not* searching for a specific private key, because you don't even know the user's public key.  You are trying to generate a keypair which, when hashed, collides with their bitcoin address, thus allowing you to spend from it.

There haven't been any significant deposits to 1933 since November'12 so one might expect there to be other lost chests stranded around.  With all the spotlight on this wallet, the enterprising treasure-hunter/thief might better quest at other cursed coin caches.

This legendary pirate has left in the wake of his sunken vessel an intriguing tale of absconded booty for digital diggers of posterity.

[NewLiberty]

So... either you are hoping to be stealing from him (or someone else), or you are doing a favor for him (and aiding and abetting an alleged criminal), or stealing from a government?

would it be stealing if someone would own the private key in your opinion?

Sorry for this but I might not be understanding the question.  If you are asking:
"Is it stealing if you crack a wallet that does not belong to you without permission of the rightful owner of the (private key of the) wallet."
Yes, I think that is stealing.

I don't think anyone is really arguing that it isn't stealing, (or plunder, if it is indeed pirate booty).  Instead I think that they feel that it is justified because of their belief about who might own it and the circumstances around that.

I'd love to hear what you mean by "a wallet that doesn't belong to you"?

c.f. artistic license


Or if you prefer, consider the difference between owning the wallet and pwning it.

Realistically, the statistical probability of anyone getting at these coins without the pvt key is... unlikely.  So if here be something ulterior, perhaps the purpose of plausible deniability for the prospective prospector partaking in the probabalistically preposterous?

Yeah... with all these trying... just maybe that future spender of these, is just, lucky. 

[David Rabahy]

To all the people saying 2^256, please know that it's actually 2^160 to brute force a bitcoin address.  You don't need to find the exact private key, you just need to find another key which collides with the hash to form the same address.  Did you know that for any given bitcoin address, you can expect there to be roughly 2^96 different public keys which are valid for that address.. and so you just need to generate *one* of them to be able to spend from that address.

Is it actually less than 160 since the first character has to be 1?

How many addresses can a normal computer try each second?  Feel free to be generous.  A trillion you say?  Whoa, but ok.  2^40.  How many computers on your team?  Be generous.  A trillion you say?  Whoa, another 2^40.  Wow, every second the team is trying 2^80 addresses.  There are about 2^25 seconds in a year.  So, that first year the team knocks down 2^105 addresses, nice.  So, in the first trillion years the team will get 2^145 addresses done.  Oh, darn the end of the universe is coming up and we are still short by a factor of 2^160/2^145=2^15.  Oh, we're gonna need faster than normal computers and a really big team.

[n4ru]

To all the people saying 2^256, please know that it's actually 2^160 to brute force a bitcoin address.  You don't need to find the exact private key, you just need to find another key which collides with the hash to form the same address.  Did you know that for any given bitcoin address, you can expect there to be roughly 2^96 different public keys which are valid for that address.. and so you just need to generate *one* of them to be able to spend from that address.

Is it actually less than 160 since the first character has to be 1?

How many addresses can a normal computer try each second?  Feel free to be generous.  A trillion you say?  Whoa, but ok.  2^40.  How many computers on your team?  Be generous.  A trillion you say?  Whoa, another 2^40.  Wow, every second the team is trying 2^80 addresses.  There are about 2^25 seconds in a year.  So, that first year the team knocks down 2^105 addresses, nice.  So, in the first trillion years the team will get 2^145 addresses done.  Oh, darn the end of the universe is coming up and we are still short by a factor of 2^160/2^145=2^15.  Oh, we're gonna need faster than normal computers and a really big team.

It's not realistically possible. The most efficient (performance for the price) GPU at address hashing is the 5870, doing ~30Mkey/s (roughly 2^30). With the difficulty of cracking exponentially rising upwards to 2^60, it's definitely not going to be possibly pre-quantum.

[niniyo]

Is it actually less than 160 since the first character has to be 1?

That is *added* after the 160 bit hash.  Please read about how addresses are made here: https://en.bitcoin.it/wiki/Technical_background_of_Bitcoin_addresses

[NewLiberty]

Its over 18MM now, hurry up!  LOL

[leopard2]

the government wants to destroy BTC not own it

they have a much better currency, based on Proof-of-Force, which can only be mined by the regime at zero difficulty or extraced from other stakeholders by a process called taxes

everybody else has got to use it. This curreny is called USD in the US, EUR in Europe and so on ...