Quote from: MrSolo on Today at 02:34:53 PM

Quote from: shinohai on Today at 02:00:19 PM

Quote from: BlackHatCoiner on Today at 07:32:28 AM

Quote from: shinohai on March 01, 2021, 11:03:52 PM

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 hash (which is the address decoded) 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.

I never said this was number of addresses. Plenty of tools exist to find collisions, though OP strikes me as the type that would be more interesting in playing the lottery and bashing up something to search https://allprivatekeys.com/ or something.

never heard of this website, but it's proof of exactly what i said which is they found 19321 private keys in 50771 Bitcoin addresses with transactions. just for bitcoin addresses so to people who say it's not possible here is a good proof that it is possible and can be done with a large enough of group with good machines with some luck

The addresses on that site *could* be - as has already been mentioned in this thread - collisions and NOT keys that were simply cracked by brute force ya know. Cheesy