Quote from: DannyHamilton on January 06, 2016, 03:04:15 AM

Quote from: BurtW on January 06, 2016, 02:47:30 AM

Unfortunately the function will not predict the 41st key.

No, but (depending on how you define "close") I'll bet I can get you close to the 41st key. Specifically, I'm nearly certain that I can find you a formula that will result in a value that is less than 2^n-1 * 0.5 (which I think would be 2^n-2) away from the actual private key. So for the 41st key I can get you a value that will be within 2³⁹ of the actual key (with a 50% chance that my value is actually within 2³⁸ and a 25% chance that my value is within 2³⁷).

While I'm being truthful here, those who are aware of the ranges that the random numbers fall between will probably notice the obviousness in my statement.

Sure, all you need to do is calculate the midpoint of the potential values of the private key for the 41st key.

I am not sure if this would get someone "close" to the 41st private key, although I do not think it matters if you are "close" because AFAIK, for private key n, you receive no benefit for knowing private key n+1, and there is no indication that you are only "+1" away from n.

(BTW, I was able to accurately predict the principle behind my response without even reading anything except this post, although my specific response was only formulated after reading the entire thread......and having most of the formulas go way over my head).

Quote from: Bulista on December 28, 2015, 06:25:09 PM

--snip--

One thing I noticed:

The first address in the transaction is tagged on blockchain.info with "1st Bitcoin Address Compressed".

So probably this transaction was done by the Bitcoin devs? or even... satoshi?

That address links to a website that appears to be a Chinese version of directory.io (that has recently been taken offline).