Re: total bitcoin address 2^160 or 2^160/2

Quote from: davidjjones on Today at 03:06:19 PM

then maybe there are more (or less) than 2^96 privatekeys for some addresses?

I'll show you how detailly and decimally how many private keys can create the same address. So there are 2²⁵⁶-2³²-977 valid private keys. That's:

Code:

115792089237316195423570985008687907853269984665640564039457584007908834671663

Total combinations of a 160-bit number are 2¹⁶⁰ which is:

Code:

1461501637330902918203684832716283019655932542976

So, each address should averagely have the division of those two numbers;

115792089237316195423570985008687907853269984665640564039457584007908834671663 / 1461501637330902918203684832716283019655932542976

That's:

Code:

79228162514264337593543950336

Each time you spend bitcoins from one of your addresses, you're signing using 1 of the 79,228,162,514,264,337,593,543,950,336 different and valid, on average, private keys.