Once when I first started getting into crypto, I accidentally sent sone altcoins to the wrong address and of course, that was that. The coins were gone.
That made me wonder if the following scenario is possible: Could someone create a brand new Bitcoin address and find Bitcoin sitting in his wallet if someone accidentally sent coins to that address a year or so ago? Or will coins only show up if someone sends them to the wrong address and that address already exists.
I was just curious.
It is impossible because of the length of the private key. A bitcoin private key is usually a 256 bit number, where a bit is a choice between 0 or 1. You must throw a coin 256 times and get each of the heads and tails combinations exactly right. 256 throws, you can do that right?
There are 2^256 possibilities. Guess the number below 115.792.089.237.316.195.423.570.985.008.687.907.853.269.984.665.640.564.039.457
.584.007.913.129.639.936.
If you can do that, you have the control. The chance of this randomly occurring? 1/ (2^256). Practically zero.
Newer wallets may use BIP 32 seeds for their private keys, which can be as long as 512 bits. There is also the risk of have a multi signature address where you need to guess not only one private key but four or more.