Just for illustration purposes, if you take

1BBBvd9G5YThYVVMSGSxJzQvQiQm3WxJC2

as a passphrase and create a brainwallet from it, you will get

1EFBsAdysTf81k72v9Zqsj3NMuo6KoWD2r as an address, and

5Jn1okR6g8jM3fCjZbCgJQNwwHde8v8Rw2HEpumamnGwFW6ogo1

as the corresponding private key.

If you check this address on the blockchain, you will find a wallet that had 51 transactions with a total balance of once 37 BTC.

This may have been asked and answered, but I couldn't find it in the forum.

Checking the list of hacked brain wallets (18k) it appears that many used existing wallet addresses as passphrase. A few examples below.

137XrofaWZhaZW2uB7eDsPjcwCNMTXVLot
1BBBvd9G5YThYVVMSGSxJzQvQiQm3WxJC2
16era4SgYEcbZD1pu6oCBXGXjK2wSrePe8
14nuZCWe76kWigUKAjFxyJLFHQyLTsKXYk
1Pjg628vjMLBvADrPHsthtzKiryM2y46DG
1KzSULbG3fRVjWrpVNLpoB6J62xYL42AdN
3BTxuixRkhMQfTSqCLmq9Wn4jJ9H3dszhX
1LdkWzq9DxopPkY1hCmQ3DezenP5PQLNC3
3BHsbqZnUGM5Gbwsxe7ukk8NJc81kfhY8Y
1Q81rAHbNebKiNH7HD9Mh2xtH6jgzbAxoF

Obviously these are easy to guess. I am curious as to why these were used as passphrases. Was there a wallet app that did this, or why did people believe this was a good idea?

Thanks.

http://www.segwit.co/#

It does not look as if SegWit is anywhere near the required support.

By strong password, I assume you are referring to BIP038? I agree, if you want a paper wallet that has an additional layer of protection in case it falls into the wrong hands, that's a good way to go.

Brain wallets are only useful if you do not want to print or store anything other than your public address. In the example I gave, you do not have to remember anything but your phrase (you can have a modified one for each public address), and a strong password which you can employ as a SALT for hashing your phrase.

Your word document with different passwords must never fall into wrong hands, e.g. someone who hacks your computer.

In my case, they would have to pick my brain ;-)

 

Hello folks,

I have read a lot about brain wallets. They sure are intriguing in that you would never have to write anything down that could be discovered by someone else. They are also inherently unsafe in that the passphrase can be brute forced, rainbowed, dictionaried, etc. I did a little expedition, and found a number of brain wallets, by trial and error:

1. The Merkle Root hash of the Genesis Block creates a valid address that has been funded in the past
2. The secret message in the Genesis Block "The Times 03/Jan/2009  ....." also creates a valid and funded address
3. Satoshi's name in many variants, mixed case, lower case, including/excluding blanks leads to many brain wallets
4. "Dread Pirate Roberts" leads to a brain wallet
5. "it was the best of times it was the worst of times" leads to a valid brain wallet
6. bitaddress.org has a vanity address 1NiNja1bUmhSoTXozBRBEtR8LeF9TGbZBN - it will lead to a valid brain wallet address   
7. "to be or not to be" has a valid address.

There is a good piece on why not to use brain wallets http://fc16.ifca.ai/preproceedings/36_Vasek.pdf
however, I can think of ways to improve security and still benefit from the convenience.

1. Create a phrase you are able to remember, for example: "Al Gore invented the Internet and that's an inconvenient truth."
2. Send this through an independent SHA256 generator with a SALT phrase of : "We consume too much NACL."
3. Take the resulting hash as an input for generating your brain wallet address.

Challenge me ;-)

So I found this TX which links the initial funding of all 6 addresses on 2013-11-22 to the same source
https://blockchain.info/en/tx/a289ea76bcc396412e90d63b90eb462ea2adb326aa027d5a1bb8864c7c152012

I am new to this forum. This may have been discussed in the past, or it may belong into a different category. If so, my apologies.
   

I have looked at the wealthiest 100 bitcoin addresses (in terms of UTXO) and noticed a curious commonality between 8 of them. They are currently listed as #6 through #13.

What is it that they have in common:

1.    they all have a balance slightly above 66,000 BTC
2.   they have zero outgoing TX, never spent a Satoshi
3.    they all received their last input greater than 1 BTC in the time frame between 2014-11-12 and 2014-11-17. For each of them, this last large TX put their balances over 66,000 BTC
4.    they all have received fractional inputs since, but not many - maybe 15
5.    their very last input for each was on June 28th 2017, at 18:19:44, same block
6.    their first input TX was very close as well - for 6 of them it was on 2013-11-22, one of them on 2013-11-25, and the last one on 2014-02-24

Does anyone know or have an idea what's up with these? I was thinking, maybe a mixer? But that's a hell of a capital reserve, we are talking $1.2b. (I know the average buying price may have been 1/3rd but still). Also mixers need to send out some coin, unless ...

It's not the FBI's account (at least I didn't see any inputs from DPR 1FfmbHfnpaZjKFvyi1okTjJJusN455paPH), and not Mt Gox, I am pretty certain about that. Any takers?

Thanks in advance