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Well that's a different lottery system with much better odds than this. Technically miners could start mining by trying to guess private keys, but there's no r
by aqme28 5y ago
Well that's a different lottery system with much better odds than this.
Technically miners could start mining by trying to guess private keys, but there's no reason to because the expected value is so so much worse.
- bhouston 5y agoHas someone done the expected cost to find a usable BTC address as well as the expected value of a BTC address? What is the ratio?
- garmaine 5y agoAstronomical. You could convert every computer into existence into hunting for used private keys, and run them for the lifetime of the universe, and you’d be unlikely to find even one used key.
- bhouston 5y agoWhat is the expected speed up if using quantum techniques? Can quantum techniques allow one to more effectively search for a specific private key to a BTC account?
- robbiep 5y agoWell, theoretically, instantly. But that’s kind of like asking what if I had this potion that instantly cured every disease known to man and then some, what would happen. What sort of quantum computer are you talking about? How many qubits?
- shawabawa3 5y agonot exactly true BTC addresses that have never sent BTC are not vulnerable to quantum computers as the public key is only sent when a transaction is made. The address you send to is a hash of the public key and irreversible even with quantum computers
- lvass 5y agoI think it's square root of classical computing time, using Grover's algorithm.
- HPsquared 5y agoHow do the units work there? The dimensions would be time^(1/2)... That isn't a physical time. It's it the number of operations which is the square root? (Presumably the different types of computer don't take the same amount of time per operation)
- garmaine 5y agoThat’s reversing hashes. Finding the private key for a given public key would be basically instant if your quantum computer was large enough.
- shawabawa3 5y agoQuantum computers can be used to crack public keys for a bitcoin account yes, but an addresses public keys are only published when a transaction is made Best practice for secure bitcoin accounts is to always send the entire balance when making a transaction, and have the "change" go back to a new address
- garmaine 5y agoNot anymore. With taproot the key used is published on the blockchain when the output is created.
- shawabawa3 5y agoThat doesn't make sense. I haven't published the public key to my bitcoin wallet. If someone sends to my address how do they publish the public key? There are new output formats with taproot but they aren't mandatory and you can still send to addresses with no published public key
- satronaut 5y agoThey really can't though. Asics are designed to do the SHA2(SHA2()) function over and over again. A private key is any number between 1 and 2^256 power. An ASIC arguably couldn't even perform the operations to query the Bitcoin blockchain and see how many unspent UTXO's the private key's corresponding public key controls.