Post
Topic
Board Development & Technical Discussion
Re: Statistical analysis of Bitcoin public key distribution
by
DannyHamilton
on 25/09/2014, 03:41:35 UTC
I dont know which algorithm it is using,

Clearly.  Please explain how random guessing and tossing out words that you think might be associated with cryptography would be helpful at all?

if its gpg,

It's not.  The public key is ECDSA using the secp256k1 curve. The bitcoin address is a RIPEMD-160 hash of a SHA-256 hash.

should be totally random and nothing could be found if its not then the flaw might be from GPG and about the entropy that each system used to generate the key.

The entropy is in the choosing of the private key.  The questions being asked, as I understand them, are if a statistical analysis has been attempted to determine if there are any flaws in any of ECDSA, SHA-256, or RIPEMD-160 that might lead to discovery that either public keys or bitcoin addresses are less random than believed.

In theory you could generate an address that is already done but then the private key would not be the same, therefor you wouldnt be able to spend the funds.. correct me if im wrong.

You are wrong.  If you have a private key that generates a particular bitcoin address then you can spend all bitcoins that are received at that address, even if that private key isn't the same private key that was used by the intended recipient to originally generate the address.

(Note: The only way that you "could generate an address that is already done" with a different private key is if there is a flaw in ECDSA, SHA-256, or RIPEMD-160.  There are currently no known flaws that would cause this, and with nearly 6 years of use bitcoin has not ever had a recorded instance of this happening.)