Post
Topic
Board Bitcoin Discussion
Re: Changing a private key of a public address
by
DannyHamilton
on 16/06/2016, 20:55:46 UTC
danny hamilton is half right on this one.

there can be more then 1 private key to a single bitcoin address.. but it is most definetly practically impossible to find another key that hashes to the same address.
- snip -

Franky is correct, my answer was based on the assumption that you wanted a practical answer to your question and not a technical one.

Technically each bitcoin address has on average 7.9 X 1028 different private keys that will all result in the exact same address.

Unfortunately, with nearly 1.158 X 1077 different possible private keys to check, you'd have a 1 in 1.46 X 1048 chance of any private key that you check resulting in the same address.  If each of the 7 billion people on the earth had the time and resources to ALL check a billion possible private keys per second, it would take about 6.62 X 1022 years to check 1.46 X 1048 private keys.