Quote from: aws on June 16, 2016, 11:10:23 PM

Quote from: DannyHamilton on June 16, 2016, 08:55:46 PM

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

can you point me to where you got this information from. thank you.

A private key is a random 256 bit number between 1 and 115792089237316195423570985008687907852837564279074904382605163141518161494336 when represented in decimal

or in hexadecimal represented as a number between 0x1 and 0xFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFEBAAEDCE6AF48A03BBFD25E8CD0364140

This information can be found here:
https://en.bitcoin.it/wiki/Private_key

As a reasonable approximation, lets use 1.158 X 10⁷⁷.

A version 1 bitcoin address is a RIPEMD160 hash with a prepended version number, and an appended checksum. This information can be found here:
https://en.bitcoin.it/wiki/Technical_background_of_version_1_Bitcoin_addresses

The result of a RIPEMD-160 hash is a 160 bit number between 1 and 1461501637330902918203684832716283019655932542976

This information can be found here:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/RIPEMD

As an approximation, lets use 1.46 X 10⁴⁸

Simple mathematics indicates that if there are 1.158 X 10⁷⁷ unique private keys possible, and only 1.46 X 10⁴⁸ unique version 1 addresses possible, then there are an average of:

(1.158 X 10⁷⁷) / (1.46 X 10⁴⁸) = 7.9 X 10²⁸ private keys per address.