Quote from: Gerbie on Today at 01:50:22 PM

A very interesting discussion!

Perhaps someone with the hardware to test it can help.

The prefix "1BY8GQbnueY" or even "1BY8GQbnue" is too long though. We should start with a shorter one to test the principle and look for the distribution.
Depending on your hardware, "1BY8GQbn" or "1BY8GQbnu" might work.

Search for these prefixes. If you find several of them, take two very close together and scan in the area between them. If you find another one, narrow the range again to the smallest range in between. This way we can find an expected distance value for that prefix.

Then test this on other prefixes you found, and you can see if the value you found is also close to the distances between the other prefixes. However, there will be a deviation, so allow some margin when setting the ranges. It might lead to some kind of average, but of course there is no guarantee. Some prefixes will be an "exception" and be much closer or further away.

On the other hand, what is missing from the discussion are the ECC calculations. Two consecutive private keys can generate two public keys very close to each other, or very far apart. These values are then hashed and so on to generate the address... I would say that the chance of two successive inputs generating hashes and addresses close to each other is very unlikely, but thanks to ECC we have no clue about the input of the hash (based on the private key)...

For my part, I would appreciate a more factual and respectful discussion, let's get emotional (and maybe even drunk) when you find a private key

If people like mcdouglasx, alberto and zielar approve of this topic. I can make it a small priority.