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A comment on U.S. Feds Seized Nearly $1B in Bitcoin from Wallet Linked to Silk Road. Parent comment

Re:U.S. Feds Seized Nearly $1B in Bitcoin from Wallet Linked... by prepend on Thursday November 05, 2020 @12:48PM (#25000258)
How would you verify that the private key is unknown? I guess an auditable process in a black box to confirm the key is ever stored. But with $1B at stake, there’s some serious incentive to measure electrical output or something to snoop the key.

I guess you could send to a random address, but there’s an infinitesimal chance that someone in the future generates a key with that address, right?

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Re:U.S. Feds Seized Nearly $1B in Bitcoin from Wallet Linked... by Drip33 on Thursday November 05, 2020 @12:53PM (#25000312)
This address has no known private key https://www.blockchain.com/btc/address/1BitcoinEaterAddressD...

Sure someone could randomly guess it but not likely. You don't need to have or know a private key to generate a valid checksum bitcoin address that can be sent to.

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Re:U.S. Feds Seized Nearly $1B in Bitcoin from Wallet Linked... by Scoundreller on Thursday November 05, 2020 @01:28PM (#25000611)
I just created several trillion “disposal” sounding addresses and started sharing the one that I guessed a private key for. There’ll be some real surprises in 2025!
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Re:U.S. Feds Seized Nearly $1B in Bitcoin from Wallet Linked... by Drip33 on Thursday November 05, 2020 @01:32PM (#25000636)
If you can generate the private key to a 27 character or longer English readable Bitcoin address then you can use the same magical technology you possess to earn far more than $1 billion USD.
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Re:U.S. Feds Seized Nearly $1B in Bitcoin from Wallet Linked... by laurent92 on Thursday November 05, 2020 @12:59PM (#25000370)
Same question: Ok we may not be able to brute-force it today for less than $1bn, but tomorrow, may a vulnerability in the algorithm make it possible to regenerate the private key?
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Re:U.S. Feds Seized Nearly $1B in Bitcoin from Wallet Linked... by monokh on Thursday November 05, 2020 @01:03PM (#25000420)
If there is ever such a vulnerability in bitcoin that allows you to either

- Generate private keys at a rate in which you will be able to produce it in a reasonable time

or

- Outright reverse engineer the private key from the public key or other metadata

Then Bitcoin is broken and that 1bn is worth next to nothing.

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Re:U.S. Feds Seized Nearly $1B in Bitcoin from Wallet Linked... by matt_kantor on Thursday November 05, 2020 @01:54PM (#25000826)
If someone discovers such a vulnerability and is able to cash out before it's publicized then they'll make a lot of money anyway.

They could also short Bitcoin before intentionally crashing it.

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Re:U.S. Feds Seized Nearly $1B in Bitcoin from Wallet Linked... by cloudhead on Thursday November 05, 2020 @01:55PM (#25000843)
Keep in mind the receiving public key is not revealed when money is sent to an address, only its hash. So you'd have to "reverse" SHA256 first.
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