Post
Topic
Board Development & Technical Discussion
Re: Brute-forcing Bitcoin private keys
by
BlackHatCoiner
on 02/03/2021, 07:32:28 UTC
Since 2^256 is likely a number larger than the number an atoms in the known universe, better get to crackin' with that abacus or wait for the advent of quantum computers if/when machines capable of doing this come to exist in our lifetimes.
2256 is not the number of the addresses. Even if you brute force private keys, that are around 2256, you want to find a collision, not necessarily someone's private key. A RIPEMD-160 hashed address is 160-bits long, which means 2160. So you're brute forcing this number:

1,461,501,637,330,902,918,203,684,832,716,283,019,655,932,542,976

Since private keys are ~2256 and all possible combinations of addresses 2160, then you're trying to find one of the ~296 private keys that collide with the same address. So next time you create an address, keep in mind that besides your private key, there are around 79,228,162,514,264,337,593,543,950,335 more.