Is there a way to build a wallet generator till you hit the jackpot ?

[mel2000]

Wouldn't using two factor authorization make that method less likely of success?

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[jojo69]

Yup, but if we ever get that far we'll have intergalacticcoin and ASIC makers will have moved on to cramming stars into fancy boxes. BFL customers will be complaining by the time they received their units they'd turned into red dwarves

outstanding

[bitpop]

There is no 2 factor

[TippingPoint]

Properly packaged, these could be an effective promotional item for Bitcoin.  The ideal package should be preloaded with orphaned and dormant addresses, require that the "player" download a bitcoin wallet before using the generator, and ideally have made some Bitcoin transfer to it.

As with any lottery, near misses to the big payoff should be displayed, and can provide tantalizing reinforcement.

If we can't market unlimited free chances to win millions of abandoned dollars in a way that promotes more widespread Bitcoin awareness and usage, we really are a bunch of nerds.

Regardless of the odds, they are a noticeable improvement over zero.  And spinning the wheel is free, at many times per second.

The screen saver method is only one such implementation.  A simpler approach would be a batch file that ensures that the player has a Bitcoin wallet, and then runs vanitygen https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=25804.0 coupled to a GUI that provides just the right amount of user feedback and "near misses", with a search file of the largest abandoned addresses, and the matches written to an output file.  By using just the first 8 characters of the target addresses, a small number of encouraging hits would be generated.

[DeathAndTaxes]

Regardless of the odds, they are a noticeable improvement over zero.  And spinning the wheel is free, at many times per second.

No they aren't.  It is like trying to get to another star and your progress is 0% so you decide to jump.  You get too feet off the ground and call that a noticeable improvement over zero.

[Birdy]

And spinning the wheel is free, at many times per second.

Not really, it costs energy to do that.
Even if the computer is on anyway it would use more energy doing all the work.

[bitpop]

We can sell it as a bitcoin robot

[DeathAndTaxes]

Wouldn't using two factor authorization make that method less likely of success?

No but multi-sig would.  However the chance of success is ~0%.  You are far more likely to die before reading the end of this post then ever having a collision occur.  Still alive?  Good your coins are probably safe too.

[TippingPoint]

Regardless of the odds, they are a noticeable improvement over zero.  And spinning the wheel is free, at many times per second.

No they aren't.  It is like trying to get to another star and your progress is 0% so you decide to jump.  You get too feet off the ground and call that a noticeable improvement over zero.

No.  It is not like that.

You decide to jump, hundreds or thousands of times per second.  Most times you only move 0.01 inch, and occasionally you jump 46 feet, and occasionally someone posts documentation in a forum that they jumped 273 miles.

The number of encouraging results increases over time.  And "players" would get closer to a match.  And the value of the Bitcoins keeps increasing.

We would have a much harder time promoting something with a zero chance.  Unless we were a religion, offering "eternal life".

[bitpop]

Yeah but promoting stealing will make them scared to keep bitcoins after

[TippingPoint]

We should not promote stealing.  It should only target abandoned addresses.

Plus, it can't be stealing if they don't get an exact match.  And we have already stipulated that the chances are very, very, very small.

[Birdy]

We should not promote stealing.  It should only target abandoned addresses.

So, how do you know if an address is abandoned?

[TippingPoint]

We should not promote stealing.  It should only target abandoned addresses.

So, how do you know if an address is abandoned?

That is an excellent question.  Some people may be comfortable waiting 100 years before trying.  Just to be sure.

[bitpop]

There goes someone's stash

[TippingPoint]

Owners of addresses with a very large amount of Bitcoins in them, that have been dormant for years, should consider immediately moving them to multiple addresses with smaller balances in them.  This will demonstrate that the accounts are not dormant.

Unless they are confident that the chances of someone obtaining the private key are "zero".  You know, like jumping to another star.

[DeathAndTaxes]

Regardless of the odds, they are a noticeable improvement over zero.  And spinning the wheel is free, at many times per second.

No they aren't.  It is like trying to get to another star and your progress is 0% so you decide to jump.  You get too feet off the ground and call that a noticeable improvement over zero.

No.  It is not like that.

You decide to jump, hundreds or thousands of times per second.  Most times you only move 0.01 inch, and occasionally you jump 46 feet, and occasionally someone posts documentation in a forum that they jumped 273 miles.

The number of encouraging results increases over time.  And "players" would get closer to a match.  And the value of the Bitcoins keeps increasing.

We would have a much harder time promoting something with a zero chance.  Unless we were a religion, offering "eternal life".

Your computer would be burning electricity.  Do you CPU solomine Bitcoins?  That would be more cost effective.   You could make all kind of "fun" stats on how close to solving a block you got.  In the end it would just mean wasting an asinine amount of energy that has a ~0% chance of every providing a benefit.

[TippingPoint]

I agree with you.

But for promotional and entertainment purposes ...

[DeathAndTaxes]

I agree with you.

But for promotional purposes ...

I can't think of a worse promotion then someone buying the hype running their jackpot generator for a month or two racking up $100 in electrical cost only to find out they have been duped and they didn't even have a quadrillionth of a percent chance of making a cent.


"Bitcoin is a scam you will never win anything".
"My son downloaded that Bitcoin thing and ran up $500 in electrical bills.  We can't afford this".
"Everyone is paying a lot so someone must be getting rich off this free lottery anyone have any ideas".
"Bitcoin destroyed my computer".

[Birdy]

I agree with you.

But for promotional and entertainment purposes ...

...are tons of ideas more suitable than "hey, you could empty a Bitcoin address" that sounds like Bitcoin addresses are insecure.

[TippingPoint]

Which is a better deal mathematically?

• Buying lottery tickets for $1 each, with a $100 million prize
• Having unlimited free chances (maybe 1000 per second) to find a private key to a dormant Bitcoin account with millions of dollars in it