Some basic calculations (based on creating 30000 bitcoin keys per second) tell me it would take you approximately 1.2239x10e60 centuries just to get through 1% of all possible addresses.

Math is fun.

You don't have to go through all possible addresses, you just need to find one that exists, no? Although my gut tells me that's not going to make much of a difference in terms of the size of the search space.

The point is that there is a staggeringly large amount of possible addresses, and that this space is incredibly sparsely populated by actual wallet addresses. You could generate an enormous amount of addresses looking for bitcoins, and not even come close to likely to finding any.

To put this into perspective, the universe is only approximately:

13.798±0.037×10e9 years old

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Age_of_the_universe

This is futile, the collision chance is unlikely low - the only thing that IS worthwile is doing dictionary attacks on brainwallets!

You should try it, and update us with how many Bitcoins you were able to get this way :)

I'm sorry, I misspoke. Not centuries. 1.2239x10e60 millennia.

With a factor of 10^60 in there, the difference between a century and a millennium is down in noise anyway. :)

I believe you accidentally some math. It's like looking for a needle in a haystack by checking every atom in the known universe.