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Time for a new investment strategy that involves buying whatever (index funds?) then losing your password to force a hold till the encryption algo has been crac

by hnbear 2y ago

Time for a new investment strategy that involves buying whatever (index funds?) then losing your password to force a hold till the encryption algo has been cracked or compute power makes it easy to brute-force. Call it the Moore’s Law Fund.

buildbot 2y ago
An interesting but not entirely practical offshoot of this idea is a fund that buys (collects legally?) wallets with lots of crypto & lost passwords and tries to crack them over time.
- sandworm101 2y ago
  Or just buy random used digital storage devices in bulk and scan them for potential wallets, or other marketable data. Half the "broken" USB drives out there still have plenty of retrievable data on them. It would be like the "Storage Wars" show, but digital. (Fyi, one very marketed video tape was discovered when the contents of a certain celeb's storage locker was put up for auction. Imagine the possibilities if one collected all the storage devices thrown away in a particular LA neighborhood. Or DC.)
  - kube-system 2y ago
    I don't think it's necessarily legal (at least in some jurisdictions) to collect bitcoin that way, even if you've legally obtained the storage device.
- paulpauper 2y ago
  This is already done. The feds and hackers have huge troves of wallets and files that they are trying to crack, either by finding holes in the encryption method used or brute force.
sneak 2y ago
This is already how bitcoin mining works. Compute is used to calculate partial hash collisions via brute force. The number of bits required in the collision adjusts dynamically based on the duration of the last 2016 blocks. If you're the first to find a valid collision for the next block, you get 3.125 BTC.
- hnbear 2y ago
  Less fun with a 10 minute lockup till the next block
ljlolel 2y ago
Best if you just try to lose half the password so you have an advantage on cracking it.
astrange 2y ago
That's what a retirement account is for.
sharperguy 2y ago
Bitcoin has a locktime opcode[1] which allows you to set a time when the transaction output can be spent, effectively locking the funds irrevocably for a fixed amount of time. [1]: https://en.bitcoin.it/wiki/Timelock https://en.bitcoin.it/wiki/Timelock

by hnbear 2y ago

buildbot 2y ago

An interesting but not entirely practical offshoot of this idea is a fund that buys (collects legally?) wallets with lots of crypto & lost passwords and tries to crack them over time.

sandworm101 2y ago
Or just buy random used digital storage devices in bulk and scan them for potential wallets, or other marketable data. Half the "broken" USB drives out there still have plenty of retrievable data on them. It would be like the "Storage Wars" show, but digital. (Fyi, one very marketed video tape was discovered when the contents of a certain celeb's storage locker was put up for auction. Imagine the possibilities if one collected all the storage devices thrown away in a particular LA neighborhood. Or DC.)
- kube-system 2y ago
  I don't think it's necessarily legal (at least in some jurisdictions) to collect bitcoin that way, even if you've legally obtained the storage device.
paulpauper 2y ago
This is already done. The feds and hackers have huge troves of wallets and files that they are trying to crack, either by finding holes in the encryption method used or brute force.

sneak 2y ago

This is already how bitcoin mining works. Compute is used to calculate partial hash collisions via brute force. The number of bits required in the collision adjusts dynamically based on the duration of the last 2016 blocks. If you're the first to find a valid collision for the next block, you get 3.125 BTC.

hnbear 2y ago
Less fun with a 10 minute lockup till the next block

ljlolel 2y ago

Best if you just try to lose half the password so you have an advantage on cracking it.

astrange 2y ago

That's what a retirement account is for.

sharperguy 2y ago

Bitcoin has a locktime opcode[1] which allows you to set a time when the transaction output can be spent, effectively locking the funds irrevocably for a fixed amount of time. [1]: https://en.bitcoin.it/wiki/Timelock https://en.bitcoin.it/wiki/Timelock