Quote from: Dude65535 on March 24, 2011, 03:36:01 AM

Quote from: SteveB on March 24, 2011, 02:45:37 AM

Would you trust your money to a bank were the clerk just makes up an account number without checking if the number is already in use?

No but only because humans are really bad at producing truly random numbers.

Quote from: SteveB on March 24, 2011, 04:00:11 AM

Quote from: theymos on March 24, 2011, 03:33:23 AM

There are currently 329,993 addresses in the Bitcoin network. Say that this number of addresses are created every day for the next 140 years. That's 16,862,642,300 addresses.

The chance that at least two of those addresses collided is about 9.7x10^-29, using the formula here. Calculation.

I get that the chance is very, very, very small. But unless there is no chance at all there is still a chance. All I am saying is that there should be a check to make sure that a new address does not exist already.

This is ridiculous. Do you apply the zero chance rule to anything else in your life?

The check is impossible. I don't know if you've used the software, but you can generate addresses offline. Even if this wasn't the case having more people making ever larger numbers of comparisons to protect against one person losing the coins in one address less than one time before the heat death of the universe is crazy.