Wallet Collision

[angel55]

Wallet Collision

Bitcoin wallet collision happens when two different people  randomly generate the same Bitcoin address. They would both be able to access to the funds on that address. Is this even possible? YES

The chances of this actually happen though are astronomically small.  When you create a bitcoin address you are also creating a private key.  The address is basically the chest and the private key opens the chest and letsyou access the funds.

Ok so you can create bitcoin addresses at will so there is no limit at all.  You can be creating thousands of addresses per day if you wanted to.  Well then it may be possible to have the same address? Possible? yes  Will it happen?not likely....


 Bitcoin addresses are 160 bit hashes of the 256 bit private keys, so that means there are 2^160 or  1,460,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000 possible addresses.

Even if 9 billion people created 10 million addresses the chance of collision would be around:
0.00000000000000000000000000000000615%

[deerlion]

Thanks, I was always curious about this but was having trouble finding info on it.

[EternityFirst]

But technically it is possible, right? So what happens, when somebody smart enough will make some improvements of his own to the algorithm of adress generation in some services, like blockchain.info or others? He will gain access to your coins? Is this real?

[TryNinja]

But technically it is possible, right? So what happens, when somebody smart enough will make some improvements of his own to the algorithm of adress generation in some services, like blockchain.info or others? He will gain access to your coins? Is this real?

No? Those addresses are randomly generated. It's possible to get the same address, but I don't think you can "make your own algorithm" to generate the private keys more easily.

Maybe if the service isn't pure RNG when generating those private keys.

[EternityFirst]

But technically it is possible, right? So what happens, when somebody smart enough will make some improvements of his own to the algorithm of adress generation in some services, like blockchain.info or others? He will gain access to your coins? Is this real?

No? Those addresses are randomly generated. It's possible to get the same address, but I don't think you can "make your own algorithm" to generate the private keys more easily.

Maybe if the service isn't pure RNG when generating those private keys.

I got, that they are randomly generated. What I mean is "random" in case of computer science - is a result of execution of some function, that returns "random" result after long line of mathematical operations. Address is not generated by blockchain, right? It just adds to next block of transactions after sending an amout of coins there, if I understand it correct. So, I`m asking what about if some third party will intervene in a process of generation of an adress (let`s say, some cool-*ss hacker) to generate exact the same adress the same moment (let`s say it`s happening on blockchain.info). Then you send your BTC to this adress, thinking that it`s safe. Will the bad guys get an access to your coins in this case? Sorry if I explaining it horribly, confused in technicalities.

[jseverson]

I got, that they are randomly generated. What I mean is "random" in case of computer science - is a result of execution of some function, that returns "random" result after long line of mathematical operations

What do you even mean? If the code is meant to produce random results, it will produce random results. Anything less is not truly random. Producing the same result twice should depend entirely on the odds and nothing else. The odds in this case is astronomically low.

So, I`m asking what about if some third party will intervene in a process of generation of an adress (let`s say, some cool-*ss hacker) to generate exact the same adress the same moment (let`s say it`s happening on blockchain.info). Then you send your BTC to this adress, thinking that it`s safe. Will the bad guys get an access to your coins in this case? Sorry if I explaining it horribly, confused in technicalities.

I don't entirely get what you're saying because running an exact copy of blockchain.info's private key generator at the exact same time wouldn't necessarily provide the same result. This will only happen if they use the current timestamp as the sole random seed, in which case the problem is their method of generation, not Bitcoin's security.

But yeah, as a general rule, if collision does happen, then the two holders would both have access to the coins in them.

[pooya87]

calling it "possible" with a bold "yes" is very misleading in my opinion. it is like saying "it is possible to get hit by lightning 1000 times in a row on a sunny day!". we do not live in a theoretical world. and it is only theoretically possible for that to happen.

also it is not "wallet" collision. wallet doesn't collide with anything. it is the "private key" collision.