Post
Topic
Board Development & Technical Discussion
Re: Chances of a collision
by
jambola2
on 30/07/2015, 12:02:22 UTC
This image should at least be posted once in every "but it's possible for someone to create the same address, right?"-thread:
*snipped image*

The image says 2^256 though
Isn't it just 2^160 for BTC?
That's 2^96 times bigger

It would take a lot lot less time to crack a Bitcoin address than SHA-256 encryption (which is what the infographic talks about)

Let's look at actually counting all of these.
We have an SSD, let's see if we could write and overwrite every possible private key.
As of 2009, there exists a SSD which can write at 6 Gbits/s (6 * 2^30 bits per second)
Also, it takes up 2 watts of power.
According to wikipedia, the sun gives out 3.8 * 10^26 watts
So, we can run 1.9*10^26 of these clearly imperfect SSDs with the sun

We're dealing with 1.9 * 10^26 * 6 * 2^30 bits per second, and we have to deal with 2^160 bits
2^160/(1.9 * 10^26 * 2^30) = 10^12 seconds

This is equal to 40,000 years, definitely within the life time of the sun!
What is more, I'm considering normal inefficient SSDs.

Sure, this is still impossible (when you consider hashing and the need of a perfectly efficient dyson sphere), but the hypothetical presented in the infographic is wrong.