What are the odds of guessing someone's private key or seedphrase?

[electronicash]

it doesn't stopped you from asking this question, you must be interested to find out whether someone had the luck of a lifetime. somehow noone yet. it will be a very interesting story to hear if there is a story like this.
would someone be moral enough not to send it to somewhere else when they discover the wallet it got $millions?

i mixed up with my ether wallet seed one morning i let my kid dictate the seed whilee i write it to import.  i wrote "mole" instead of "mold" and suddenly i got a new wallet with nothing in it. if it got something on it more than my eth balance. i wouldn't mind. 😀

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[Hatchy]

The chances of guessing a private key are extremely low because cryptographic algorithms make it really hard to randomly find the correct combination. With the complexity of these algorithms, it's practically impossible to predict the right key in a reasonable time using today's computers. But maybe in the future, using the quantum computers they might be able to break through encryptions much faster than our current computers,compromising the security of systems reliant on these algorithms

[knowngunman]

Guessing someone's private keys is extremely unlikely to happen. Although, there's this theory that anything human mind can think of is possible to happen to it would take billions of years for a computer to guess a seed phrase at random. In theory, we were told that quantum computers could eventually be powerful enough to guess someone's private keys but this seems far from reality because current quantum computers are still not powerful enough to do this and even if quantum computers become more powerful, it's likely that new security measures will be developed to make private keys even more secure too. the blockchain itself is extremely secure and even if your private keys is compromised, it would still be very difficult for someone to access your crypto funds.

[digaran]

A total Bitcoin private key is 10^77 and the total atoms in the universe is 10^80.......snip.......
You need to open a Pandora Box with super luckiness to find a Bitcoin private key.

Who says BTC keys are 10^77? Secp256k1 elliptic curve group order is :

Code:

N = fffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffebaaedce6af48a03bbfd25e8cd0364141

If you add this to N

Code:

14551231950b75fc4402da1732fc9bebf

You will reach 2^256, and nobody can count the atoms in the universe, even that estimation is around 863 times greater that 2^256, but that's not the point, also pandora box only brings misery and despair if you open it, not luck.
The only physically possible way to find a private key( other than taking it by force ), is through working on public keys, and guess what? Public key cryptography is counting on the difficulty of doing that, it says "here I'm open in the public, throw your best at me" and it is safe because throwing the best is proven to be difficult to do, SO far.

[hosseinimr93]

I will say in my little knowledge that the odds of guessing someone's private key is 0.0001 which means likely impossible,

Where did you get the 0.0001 from? 0.0001 doesn't mean impossible.

But to say that sha256 has nothing to do with private keys proves that you have zero clue about what you are talking about,

A bitcoin private key is just a random number between 0 and around 2²⁵⁶ (not exactly 2²⁵⁶).

For generating a private key, all you need is to generate a random number.
You can use SHA256 or any other function to get a private key from any arbitrary data, but you don't have to do so and that's not a good method at all. As I said, a private key is just a random number.

[gabbie2010]

Another way to ask this question is, what are the odds of any two people generating the same private key at any time?

The answer for this question is pretty interesting, but to make  long story short, you have a better chance of winning the lotto 9 times in a row.

Bitcoin private keys uses SHA-256, which is the number 2 to the 256 power. Which is an unfathomably large number.
If you counted all the grains of sand on planet earth and all the drops of water in all the oceans on earth, you would not even come close to that number!


More detailed explanation:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2eZ5DP2P5As

This would be an effort in futility to guess as many numbers as private key of a Bitcoin hodler is beyond any human being, I don't think there would be any attempt by any human being to guess those numbers definitely unrealistic even randomly guessing those numbers can never lead to a private key of a hodler except utilizing a supercomputer which isn't in existence yet, even gamblers who play lotteries find it very difficult to win jackpot that requires guessing few members of 5 digits from one to hundred talkness of guessing a 64 digits of a private key of Bitcoin.

[HideYourKeys]

I guess that the only future problem related to QD would be some sort of "service denial", maybe overloading the mempool or things like that, not breaking wallets already made

[Ruttoshi]

The odd is very slim or if not impossible for one to guess the private keys or seed phrase of someone. This is because a seed phrase is an encoding of 256 bit entropy, which means that it can have 2^256 different seed phrase, a very big number.

As long as you did not generate seed phrase by selecting the words which is not a secured way. But if the words are generated randomly, it very secured and no one can guess it because it is very hard than counting the hairs on your head.

[Lorence.xD]

It's literally impossible to guess something that 12 or 24 seed phrase that has actually different words and auto generated that anyone couldn't think about. Even they spent years, decades or until the person live to guess I think its impossible where the risk is at 0.0001 that most replied said. But in hacking and tracing someone's data that's the way they can access someone's personal account but guessing would literally impossible, maybe if you made your own seed phrase but there's nothing thing like that when it comes to seedphrase to ensure our security and safety.

[Kakmakr]

Until quantum computers become a thing and is made available in the commercial markets, then it's nearly impossible to crack a private key. Even if an attacker wants to use brute force to gain access, the required efforts far outweighs the potential reward which is why no one really attempts it.

Also, it's worth noting that the SHA-256 cryptography algorithm hasn't been broken yet.

This is pretty significant... because most secure sites on the Internet use the same cryptography algorithm. (SSL, TLS, IPsec, SSH, and PGP) and Unix and Linux use SHA-256 for secure password hashing. 

So, if someone or some kind of technology can break this.... then most servers and internet services are screwed. I also think they will target the juicy addresses first, so they will be the canary in the mine for us. 

[nelson4lov]

~Snipped

This is pretty significant... because most secure sites on the Internet use the same cryptography algorithm. (SSL, TLS, IPsec, SSH, and PGP) and Unix and Linux use SHA-256 for secure password hashing. 

So, if someone or some kind of technology can break this.... then most servers and internet services are screwed. I also think they will target the juicy addresses first, so they will be the canary in the mine for us. 

Definitely. Let's hope it isn't broken anytime soon even if it does, I'm certain the Bitcoin network participants will come up with a way to mitigate it which might require a hard fork to fix. I'm not too bothered about it since the bounds of cryptography is pushed every day. When MD5 was broken and rendered obsolete, I thought that was it but we got much better algorithms since then.

[Youngkhngdiddy]

It's literally impossible to guess something that 12 or 24 seed phrase that has actually different words and auto generated that anyone couldn't think about. Even they spent years, decades or until the person live to guess I think its impossible where the risk is at 0.0001 that most replied said. But in hacking and tracing someone's data that's the way they can access someone's personal account but guessing would literally impossible, maybe if you made your own seed phrase but there's nothing thing like that when it comes to seedphrase to ensure our security and safety.

  A bitcoin key is 256 bits. So, there are 2256 possible keys to guess. (This is a very, very big number. Close to the number of atoms estimated to be in the universe.) How old is the universe estimated to be?Several billions of times longer than the age of the universe.  On just your own computer. Multiply that by many, many, many, many billions of years. Of course, given the nature of random guessing, you could get it right on your first shot. .  It’s just… not very likely at all. Given the enormous number of possible private keys, it is currently infeasible to guess a Bitcoin private key through brute-force alone, even with the most powerful computers and the most advanced techniques. In fact, the time required to guess a Bitcoin private key through brute-force is estimated to be longer than the age of the universe.
  That being said, there are other methods that attackers can use to try to steal Bitcoin or access private keys, such as social engineering, phishing attacks, malware, and other types of cybercrime. It is important to take proper security precautions when storing and using Bitcoin, such as using a reputable wallet, enabling two-factor authentication, and keeping your private keys secure and confidential.

[kryptqnick]

It's clearly impossible, at least with the current level of technological development. I see that some say it's impossible in principle, but I don't know about that. In any case, that's certainly not something a person would actually worry about when generating a seed phrase. More realistic concerns are forgetting where you put that phrase, accidentally sharing it with someone else because of storing digitally, getting your seed phrase lost by some other means (accidentally destroying the copy, for instance), etc. A storing decision is very personal, and people should analyse what they think is the likeliest risk for them, but someone guessing the phrase isn't worth any thought.

[bluebit25]

In the immediate future, that cannot happen, or it can be said that it cannot happen. And even though I'm not sure when it will take many decades or centuries to come, will people need to solve that cracking problem, and the important thing is that doing so will have any impact or use?

There was a time when I was quite interested in learning about the computing capabilities of quantum computers, and I also heard some speculation that it could solve almost all the problems that arise in the current context. But think for a moment, when it costs money, time, effort, knowledge.... to create it, do people care about taking someone else's bitcoin?

[BlackHatCoiner]

The odds of guessing someone's private key... Let me put it in this perspective. There are estimated to be 7.5 quintillion grains of sand in the Earth; that's 7.5 x 10^18. Now ignore the shape of our solar system, and make the hypothesis that there are a trillion clones of Earth, spinning around the Sun. That'd make the total grains of sand in our Solar system about 7.5 x 10^30. Stupidly large number there. Imagine if I told you to guess my chosen grain of sand, across this uncountable set of grains, and that I picked one at random, maybe at some corner of an ocean from Earth #623,546,123,002, or at a replica of Egypt from Earth #881,239,303,566.

Guess what. The number of these grains are not even the 0.0000000000001% of the total valid Bitcoin private keys.

Who says BTC keys are 10^77?

They just rounded it down. Yes, total private keys are about 2^256, but if you round it down, it's pretty much ~1.1579 * 10^77.

[Fivestar4everMVP]

Bitcoin is about 15 years old right now, and since inception, have gained much popularity as well as monetary value. Investors, together with Bitcoin enthusiasts have created hundreds of millions of bitcoin wallets, as well as wallets to other crypto currencies as well.
If in all this years, no body have been able to generate a private key, that matches another person's private key, then it simply means that  the possibility of a person generating a private key that is someone else's, is zero.

And besides, if generating a private key that belongs to another person was possible, this would have completely destroy bitcoin and crypto currencies at large, and also the value and level of security placed on them.