I have seen that there are
1,461,501,637,330,902,918,203,684,832,716,283,019,655,932,542,976
Bitcoin addresses.
If I wrote a computer program that generates private btc addresses and then generated the public address, if that public address has a balance, and if I then imported that private address into a wallet, could I claim the money on that wallet?
How many addresses would nee to be checked before I found an address with a balance?
The number you've given is merely based on the HASH160 of the public key that is 160bit which is correct, but that's merely for addresses that relies on that PubkeyHash.
The Bitcoin address generation starts from Private key if you want to be able to spend its funds so what you need to bruteforce are private keys.
Which are roughly 2^256 combinations or
115,792,089,237,316,195,423,570,985,008,687,907,853,269,984,665,640,564,039,457,584,007,913,129,639,936But since some of them are invalid, the number "
shrinks" to:
115,792,089,237,316,195,423,570,985,008,687,907,852,837,564,279,074,904,382,605,163,141,518,161,494,336Ff you can theoretically bruteforce even 5% of that, you "
may" be able to find one with funds.
-snip- as I know the fastest super computer on the planet can cycle through the combinations in 9 days.
Maybe yes (for 2^160), but they can't spend it since they've bruteforced addresses, not private keys.