Why don't miners coordinate their hashing power to brute force whale accounts?

[kaopxa]

Theyr'e just guessing hashes all day anyway - isn't it better to get a 2k BTC reward than 12?

[1680289951]

1680289951

[1680289951]

1680289951

[AGD]

Theyr'e just guessing hashes all day anyway - isn't it better to get a 2k BTC reward than 12?

There is a huge difference in finding hashes with a certain number (defined by difficulty) of leading zeros and brute forcing a private key. First we see estimated every 10 minutes and second is practically impossible.

[asche]

Long story short: it would still take way too long.

Edit:

Short story long:

Bitcoin addresses are actually the 256-bit SHA hash of an ECDSA public key, so any vulnerabilities in those algorithms would constitute a vulnerability in bitcoin itself. Realistically, however, breaking this level of encryption requires a huge amount of processing power. Coincidentally it requires precisely the same kind of processing power that bitcoin mining requires and in almost every scenario it would be massively more profitable to mine than to hack.

Edit: It's actually RIPEMD-160(SHA-256(public key)) as opposed to just SHA-256(public key) as I originally mentioned, so it's a 160-bit hash of a 256-bit hash of a public key. While the target keyspace (160 bits) is smaller thanks to this final step, it's also an additional computation that a would-be hacker must make. While the additional computational complexity doesn't even come close to canceling out the removal of 96 bits of keyspace, it should be noted that finding a collision in a 160-bit keyspace is still incredibly difficult and time consuming. More importantly, it is more difficult and time consuming than actually mining the same number of coins would be, thus making it highly unlikely anyone would even attempt such an attack - even if the equipment to make such an attack plausible in a meaningfully small span of time existed.

Source: https://bitcoin.stackexchange.com/questions/22/is-it-possible-to-brute-force-bitcoin-address-creation-in-order-to-steal-money

EDIT2:

You can also have a look at the Large Bitcoin Collider project, which is basically generating new adresses, hoping to get an already funded one:

https://lbc.cryptoguru.org/about

[bob123]

Even if all miner would stop mining and start bruteforcing private keys, they wouln't be able to search trough a fraction of the keyspace in their lifetime.

The current hashrate is at about 50TH/s. That's 50*10^12 hashes per second.

Now, lets assume they can try private keys in the same speed (which the never can, since you'd need to calculate the public key out of the private key, then hash it to get the address and then check if it cointains balance while mining simply is double-hashing).

They (all miner) would need ~ 1.15^63 seconds to check half of the keyspace. That's 1.34 * 10^58 days.
That's 1340000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000 days if ALL miner could search at the same speed as hashing works (in fact that's MUUUCH slower).


As you see, this would be completely wasted energy. It's simply not possible. The keyspace is waaaaay too big.

[asche]

Testing for collision is faster

[kingcolex]

Long story short: it would still take way too long.

Edit:

Short story long:

Bitcoin addresses are actually the 256-bit SHA hash of an ECDSA public key, so any vulnerabilities in those algorithms would constitute a vulnerability in bitcoin itself. Realistically, however, breaking this level of encryption requires a huge amount of processing power. Coincidentally it requires precisely the same kind of processing power that bitcoin mining requires and in almost every scenario it would be massively more profitable to mine than to hack.

Edit: It's actually RIPEMD-160(SHA-256(public key)) as opposed to just SHA-256(public key) as I originally mentioned, so it's a 160-bit hash of a 256-bit hash of a public key. While the target keyspace (160 bits) is smaller thanks to this final step, it's also an additional computation that a would-be hacker must make. While the additional computational complexity doesn't even come close to canceling out the removal of 96 bits of keyspace, it should be noted that finding a collision in a 160-bit keyspace is still incredibly difficult and time consuming. More importantly, it is more difficult and time consuming than actually mining the same number of coins would be, thus making it highly unlikely anyone would even attempt such an attack - even if the equipment to make such an attack plausible in a meaningfully small span of time existed.

Source: https://bitcoin.stackexchange.com/questions/22/is-it-possible-to-brute-force-bitcoin-address-creation-in-order-to-steal-money

EDIT2:

You can also have a look at the Large Bitcoin Collider project, which is basically generating new adresses, hoping to get an already funded one:

https://lbc.cryptoguru.org/about

Well and also you're no longer securing the network, confirming transactions but you're stealing and if successful you would only hurt the price and lose value across whatever coins you have.

[dothebeats]

Theyr'e just guessing hashes all day anyway - isn't it better to get a 2k BTC reward than 12?

Getting 2k coins than 12 but the value is nonexistent? Ahhh no, and also, it would require far better technology than what we have right now to get some promising results. Apart from that, you also need to factor the energy requirement. Add to that fact the vast amount of possibilities the keyspace has. Long story short: not worth the miners' money, machine and time.

[aoluain]

Theyr'e just guessing hashes all day anyway - isn't it better to get a 2k BTC reward than 12?

Are you of the thinking that wealth should be taken away from those who have
lits and given to those who have less? I dont agree with this and I dont agree
with your idea of stealing from whales

[NeuroticFish]

Theyr'e just guessing hashes all day anyway - isn't it better to get a 2k BTC reward than 12?

This image may give your answer. Shortly: because they are matter, don't live for infinite time and they have to use energy.

[jackg]

Well and also you're no longer securing the network, confirming transactions but you're stealing and if successful you would only hurt the price and lose value across whatever coins you have.

That’s also true. Miners like vitamin have a lot of money in bitcoin, if they tried to do this they’d hurt their balance a bit and also lose trust from their company.

Other companies like bitfury would have the equal impracticality of publishing the names and images of people working there, they’re probbly not too hard to track if they’ve stolen $5 million.

Even if all miner would stop mining and start bruteforcing private keys, they wouln't be able to search trough a fraction of the keyspace in their lifetime.

The current hashrate is at about 50TH/s. That's 50*10^12 hashes per second.

Now, lets assume they can try private keys in the same speed (which the never can, since you'd need to calculate the public key out of the private key, then hash it to get the address and then check if it cointains balance while mining simply is double-hashing).

They (all miner) would need ~ 1.15^63 seconds to check half of the keyspace. That's 1.34 * 10^58 days.
That's 1340000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000 days if ALL miner could search at the same speed as hashing works (in fact that's MUUUCH slower).


As you see, this would be completely wasted energy. It's simply not possible. The keyspace is waaaaay too big.

Individual miners are robably more towards the 100THs mark now and anyway, that’s just one miner not a whole pool that gets turned to mining addresses.
I don’t think the large bitcoin collider has done very well either in finding bitcoins (posted above by another user). It’d e header to write something to retrieve people’s data while they’re on the internet and get their private keys that way than probably mining them. Might be less time consuming too to go to every computer in the world and install your malware on it .