> Unlike physical goods which can only exist in one place at one time, it is conceivable that with a powerful enough computer, the solution could be found entir

> Unlike physical goods which can only exist in one place at one time, it is conceivable that with a powerful enough computer, the solution could be found entirely honestly by a third party simply doing some math and stumbling upon the answer at random, or by asking the right questions and exploiting some as-yet-undiscovered weakness in the implementation. This really isn't hypothetical - a multitude of poorly designed and implemented key generation algorithms (brain wallets being one of the worst examples) have made it computationally feasible to find private keys. I have the private key for 13Yk7NTC64VEfrBL9KE2NNHDrorcJ3SQbz, which currently holds a few thousand dollars worth of Bitcoin (and various forks). I found it by using an algorithm to generate many candidate keys and checking whether they'd been used. I've previously found much more substantial amounts, and in some cases have been able to track down the rightful owner. As far as I'm concerned, finding a key through clever use of computing power does not entitle one to use it from an ethical standpoint. Legally... well, I've talked to quite a few lawyers about it. There is no agreement on the answer, and as the article mentions, it's unclear who would have jurisdiction.