Wow, so here we have it.

No matter what i write on this post, either people say its impossible, or people say its possible but it wont happen, whats the point of even writing something here.

Why would anyone sell a wallet with a huge balance for a low value, ask yourself an obvious question like that, answer, they wouldnt.

Results:

Yes i have been looking at this for on and off for a year as it does fascinate me. Because everyone says its impossible to do it, thats why i do it.

So with the latest app running, with the bubble sort routine in place and comparing to the half a million addresses, guess what first SUCCESS, a private key found, WIF import, and yes a small balance appeared.

Did i take the balance, NO, i didnt. But it does prove that guessing btc private keys can be successful.

Thankyou, to all those others that think its a bad thing to try and break crypto, without people trying to break it, security does not improve. It was once thought that crypto is not hackable, but unfortunately that is no longer the case. Its just like WPA on wifi networks 20 years ago, thought to be unbreakable, well it was, now we have WPA instead.

Just so u know, its purely a bit of fun for a lazy afternoon, and a coding experiment. Why do you always think of the worst.

I wrote on this subject before in another post, but thought i would come back to this as i have an afternoon free an update the app.

I just need to verify my figures here so could someone else comment on this.

So the app has been updated and its no guessing keys much quicker and i will explain why.

The app generates a private key, and associated public key, wif key and the address key. The address key is the key which is then compared to the file which contains address keys and balances.

So here's the update, with a new bubblesort routine installed, and now with 5 million balance adddresses loaded in, the app can guess and compare approx 12 Billion comparisons a second.

It achieves this by generating 1 private address and comparing against the 5 million addresses each time, so therefore, 10000 private addresses compared against 5 million addresses = 50 billion comparisons, it does this in just over 4000 ms, thats 4 seconds.

Am i right, thats 50 billion in 4 seconds, so thats approx 12 billion or so in 1 sec?

If thats correct, i wonder what the figure in comparisons is in 24 hrs?? Its too big to calculate?

Comments please?

I think that if I did find one, no one would believe me anyway. Lol

I think you miss the point.

I'm not guessing one particular number. I generate an address and then compare that to 60000 known addresses with balances, thus increasing the chance by 60000 on every attempt.

The computer is on for other reasons 24hrs a day, so no extra electric being used.

250 million numbers which is compared to 60000 known addresses with balances every 24hrs!

So if it does get one, it's will have a balance.

I believe bitcrack does exactly this but uses a GPU card.

Still a bit of fun.

I know it's astronomically unreal, but so is the playing of the lottery, however people do win. Morally would I take someone's life savings, I don't think so, I'm really just interested in the subject.
I read up on bitcrack, so will probably take a dabble in that, as purchase of lowend GPU card is about 150$, in theory it would boost my little vb6 attempt of 2.4k per second to supposedly 25 M per sec if using bitcrack.

The whole point of this is a learning thing. I have a pc which is turned on the all time anyway, so why not run something on it, and as for the zero balances, I have chosen balances with 1000 dollars in them and upwards.

Again morally, would I take the balance?? Well I will be completely honest, I don't know, I guess it's down to how much is the balance. Again for me, it's a free lottery. Lol

Slightly different, a btc address guesser in action, as you all seem to be trying to recover private keys.

https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=QPJ_pGaJZlw

Video of the address guesser in action.

3yrs long time wow. I guess it's a bit like playing a free lottery.

Not sure if I'm allowed to post a YouTube video, if not, moderator please delete it.

https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=QPJ_pGaJZlw

Video of the address guesser in action.

It's so easy and quick to use, for scratch code it's perfect.

107 Million keys per second, wow incredible performance.

I am now where near it. I am around 2400 keys per second, as I have now had time to let the app settle down, and as above the naive guess is about right.

I am not targeting any specific address, just generating an address, and then matching against random addresses, from a dBASE of 60000.

If I were to match against one specific address then the speed goes up.

Because I use a binary sorted search, matching against 1 or 60000 addresses does not really decrease the speed, so matching against a large database improves my chances of success.

I will put up a link to a video so u can see this running. Would u believe this is built with vb6, as I can't find the right c code yet.

Lol.
Ok so started to build the app. First got 12 million computations per day as a test, this generates the private key, and public key etc. I now compare that to a database of 60000 known public keys and balances.

Day 3, improved the code somewhat. Now the same app is running at 500 million computations per 24 hrs, comparing the generated output against a dBASE of 60000 known balances addresses

So my computations are now 500 million * 60000 per 24hrs.
This is running on a Windows 7 pc icore 5.

Let's see what it comes up with in a day, a week, a year.

I know the numbers are huge.

Interesting conversation, thanks everyone, now to build the app and try. Lol

I understand all of the above, but the point I am making is this.

I can generate a private key, and from there I can generate a public address, from that same private key.

If I did this enough times, and it may take forever, eventually I will match a public address, and I will have the private key from it, so I can claim the balance if it had one, in theory?

Hi, is the hash 160 for legacy addresses?

I know this is all theory, but it seems to me that if btc wallets just reply on you not matching the private key, then it's a lack of security surely, as I know the fastest super computer on the planet can cycle through the combinations in 9 days.

Thanks for the answer.

Is it true if that were to happen, all I need is the private key to spend the funds?

Thanks