You are using a lot of words that you clearly don't understand. Therefore much of what you are asking doesn't even make sense. I'll do what I can to address each of your points.
Maybe its a noob question, but I woke up this morning wondering: what if somebody makes an ASIC to instead of mining, destroy Bitcoin from the inside...?
Then they would be wasting their money. They aren't going to be able to "destroy Bitcoin from the inside" with an ASIC.
There are ASICs out there with capabilities of TH/s, if someone applies this to hash cracking, it becomes a bit dangerous, no?
No. Blocks are secured with a proof-of-work. All the Bitcoin ASICs that exist are already applied to hash cracking. That's the "specific application" that is being described in the ASIC (
Application
Specific
Integrated
Circuit). It is not dangerous, the work required for hash cracking is the reason that the blockchain is secure against any attacker that has less than 50% of the global bitcoin hash power.
That would be 1000000000000 hash cracking attempts per second.
Yes, we all know how much a tera hash is (unless you are easily confused by the metric system).
Your thoughts?
My thoughts? I'm trying to decide if you are a troll or just overly worked up about something that has been discussed a few hundred times on this forum already.
Maybe I was not clear enough.
It is very clear that you don't know what you're talking about. You're just assuming that your imagination about how bitcoin works is accurate rather than taking the time to learn a bit about the protocol before getting all panicked.
By "cracking hashes" or "destroying Bitcoin from the inside" I mean... guessing all or as many as possible Bitcoin private keys out there.
Private keys are not hashed. Private keys are simply a random number between 0 and 1.1579X10
77 (2
256). That is a
VERY BIG number. So big, in fact, that most humans have a very difficult time comprehending just how big it is (as you have clearly demonstarted with this thread).
Public keys are not calcualted by hashing. They are calculated with the ECDSA algorithm using the secp256k1 curve.
A bitcoin address is a RIPEMD-160 hash of a SHA256 hash of the public key (with a version number prepended and a checksum appended).
Therefore, "hashing" won't help you brute force guess the private key to a bitcoin address. Instead, you would have to:
- Generate the next private key in your brute force sequence
- Calculate the public key via ECDSA (this is NOT a hash)
- Calculate the SHA256 hash of the public key
- Calcualte the RIPEMS-160 hash of the SHA256 hash
- Compare the result to EVERY bitcoin address that has any balance on it at all
Now, it might be possible to create an ASIC to handle much of this process, but it would be a waste of time and money.
(And therefore unlocking all addresses out there, including, for example, hacking into Satoshi addresses)
There hasn't been enough time in the existence of the universe to unlock all addresses out there using current technology. You aren't going to have enough time, energy, or storage space to "unlock all addresses".
I don't understand exactly how mining works
Clearly. You don't understand how bitcoin works at all. And yet you've manage to get yourself concerned about Bitcoin's security without any knowledge about what to be concerned about. I don't understand how the earth's orbit works, OMG what if the sun's gravity sucks us in tomorrow and kills us all!
but I assume it generates something different than private keys?
Correct. It generates SHA256 hashes to provide a proof-of-work.
You cannot use a miner to crack Private Keys, because to crack private keys you have to have an input string that changes over iterations,
You are correct that you cannot use a miner to crack private keys, but you are wrong about the reason. You cannot use a miner to crack private keys because miners use an Application Specific Integrated Circuit that is designed specifically for the application of hashing bitcoin block headers, and bitcoin private keys, public keys, and addresses are not hashed bitcoin block headers.
but mining ASICs are not designed in this way... right?
Wrong.
Miners have an input (block header) that changes over iterations until it finds an iteration that results in a hash value that is less than a target value.
So based on this, my question is, what if someone designs an ASIC specifically to crack Bitcoin Private Keys?
Then they would be wasting a lot of time, energy, and money on a task that they will never accomplish.
Is this even possible?
Possible to create an ASIC that assists in the calculation of bitcoin addresses from private keys? Yes. Possible to find private keys that will allow the spending of bitcoins? No.
We have a new trend rising, of quantum computing, if someone is able to combine quantum computing in an ASIC way, this may generate much much more than 1 TH/s... like 1 Million TH/s or even more.
TH/s (tera
hashes per second) aren't going to help. There is no reason at this time to believe that a quantum computer will have the ability to "crack" a properly secured bitcoin address.
But if you are telling that people can use miners to crack Bitcoin Private Keys,
They cannot.
then my question is different: How long until everything falls apart?
Falls apart? How?
However, I'm not influenced by soft sentences and big pictures, I need to have solid proofs to feel safe.
What sort of proof are you looking for. That "big picture" and those "soft sentences" already describe the mathematical facts that demonstrate your inability to comprehend how big of a nuber you are dealing with here.
A normal CPU out there, running at 10% its max speed is able to generate between 1 to 10 Hashes per second. (at least it was so with some tests I made some time ago, but it can take a bit more with some performance enhancements)
If you consider an available miner on the market, they are already able to generate 1 TeraHashes PER Second, that already counting with all calculations and everything.
When compared to 2
256 (or even 2
160), there really isn't much of a difference between 10 hashes or 10 terahashes.
Basically multiplies a basic computer power by TRILLIONS of times and all of this in just 6 years.
Yes, and trillions is a very small number, so we really haven't made any progress towards your imaginary threat at all.
So I think its time for us (bitcoiners) to start worrying about the security of our addresses.
No. It really isn't. Please stop spreading such ridiculous FUD.
Thats why I'm asking these questions, can the TH/s capabilities used by ASIC miners be used to generate Bitcoin private Keys?
No.
If yes, we may be running out of time and Bitcoin developers will probably have to update the Bitcoin hashing very soon and this would probably be bad news for the market.
We are not "running out of time". This isn't "bad news". Bitcoin developers don't have to "update the Bitcoin hashing very soon". Please stop saying such silly things.
If no, we may have a bit more time, but with quantum computing on the rise we may have to think about this in few years.
I think you have a typo there. You meant to say "we may have to think about this in a few centuries", right?
Just consider that Satoshi lost his private keys and has no access to this addresses and someone is able to crack his addresses, Bitcoin will die the next day.
Good thing nobody will be "cracking his addresses". Although, bitcoin wouldn't necessarily "die the next day" anyhow. It would mostly depend on how the "cracking" was accomplished, and whether or not the method resulted in an overall weakness for the entire system.
I hope he still has access to his addresses and is alive when the Bitcoin developers have to update the Bitcoin hashing.... so he can still transfer his bitcoins to a new generation address.
I suspect he's dead. It doesn't really concern me at all.
