At that point though the whole concept of bitcoins will be moot. If quantum computers can crack lost wallets they can also crack active wallets, and at that point there's no reason to buy bitcoin at all, which will tank the value of bitcoin making it mostly not worthwhile to crack wallets.

So if we get to that point, there will be one proof-of-concept wallet crack, and instantly after that bitcoin will cease to exist in any relevant fashion.

Its possible some country or corporation has built a secret quantum computer with enough qbits to run Shor's Algorithm. But if its a secret, we wouldn't know about it.

Eventually all the "lost" wallets will bet cracked by quantum computers.

Two wallets. 10k BTC each. These wallets were created back when BTC was 78¢. When you spend $10k the IRS might ask questions. If you are "structuring" correctly you avoid spending $9,999 and $1 within a short time span or even in the same reporting period. 10k BTC back then was something you could buy that looked like it wasn't $10k but was really close. Spend it twice in two different wallets and if there are enough other transactions no one will notice.

Anytime you see a transaction or set of transactions that add up to or are just shy of 10k USD, BTC or pretty much anything, there should be a little bell that dings in your head and causes you to think "this person is clearly thinking about US tax reporting laws and trying to dodge them."

Who had all that money back in 2011 that decided that now was the time to tap those wallets that are worth a billion each? Obviously someone that hasn't needed the money until now. Someone that is planning on spending up to 2 billion. But not right away because if you try to sell 20k BTC in a hurry it will draw attention and potentially destabilize the currency. But you could sell it all off over the next year or longer without flooding the market.

Who wants to spend up to $2 billion in the next year? What could you buy with that kind of money? Elon musk spent ~$250 million getting Trump elected. That's just an eighth of $2B. You could buy a lot of super PAC power with $2B. You could bankroll the primarying of every Republican that voted for OBBB. Weird that these wallets were dusted off so close to Elon saying he would primary anyone that voted for OBBB, and he has a strong affinity for crypto, and he had enough money in 2011 to buy that much BCT on a whim, and that he wouldn't have had to touch it to pay other bills as BTC went from 78¢ to more than $100,000 over the last 14 years.

I wonder who these wallets belong to and what they will be used for?

This is what conspiracy thinking looks like. It's me. I'm the one conspiracy thinking.

I hear this a lot but I don’t put any confidence behind it. This argument suggests that one day we’ll be able to brute force into lost wallets when we can break the encryption. Who knows how far in the future that will be.

But if I recall correctly, Bitcoin’s protocol is consensus driven. If there is an imminent threat of quantum computing, the developers could just improve the code base to resist it. Or fork the protocol to one that is resistant (Bitcoin 2). Then it’s up to 51% of the Bitcoin node operators to adopt the protocol. As soon as 51% of them upgrades, you immediately stop the threat.

I think the only reason Bitcoin is around is for two reasons: speculation, or the persons that actually believe it’s decentralised hard money free from control. I’d like to believe that there are a ton of people out there that run the BTC nodes to keep it decentralised. If there is an update that will resist quantum computing, I’m sure they’ll be eager to immediately upgrade their nodes and secure the network and those wallets. At least that’s how I believe it works, it’s been years since I first began researching it.

As an aside,
Bitcoin isn’t for me because I hate the environment impact. I hope one day it will become green, because it’s never going to go away. But I don’t blame the people that believe in it. In a world where the rich own everything and control the rules, these people are trying to opt out I guess - use a form of money that can’t be easily controlled or censored. Granted it’s all based on speculation, and whenever we run out of Bitcoin is probably when the system will become useless. Spending is discouraged when you run out of coins, so I don’t know how the Bitcoiners defend that argument. So definitely not for me.

Edit, on mobile so fixed some typos and clarified the 51% attack.

This sounds fishy.

What if somebody found out the private key for those accounts? Like, brute forced them?

Is it even technologically possible?

There's a window between the proof of concept success and Bitcoin being worthless where the attacker could attack any wallet and collect/sell while people figure out what is happening. The only question at that point is do you attack and sell aggressively to beat the clock, or do you slowly and carefully attack to try and stay under the radar? If one person has the ability to break crypto, then it follows that other people working towards it only have to align the same pieces before the window shuts.

Crypto is and always has been a scam.

Bitcoin private keys are 256 bit long. That means, there are 115792089237316195423570985008687907853269984665640564039457584007913129639936 (1.15*10^77) possible private keys.

Say you are using a bitcoin miner that's roughly 4x as fast as the curretly fastest one at 1PH/s (1*10^15), they you'll need roughly 1*10^62 seconds or 3*10^54 years.

Lets say you got a million of these miners, then you are down to 3*10^48 years, or 2*10^38 times as long as the universe has existed.

I was going to calculate how much electricity this would consume and how expensive it would be, but the answer to that is plainly "too much to imagine".

Btw, banks will flag multiple transactions of $9,999 even if the reporting threshold is $10k USD. Structuring to avoid the $10k reporting requirement is well known and no guarantee of remaining under the radar.

I hear this a lot but I don’t put any confidence behind it. This argument suggests that one day we’ll be able to brute force into lost wallets when we can break the encryption. Who knows how far in the future that will be.

But if I recall correctly, Bitcoin’s protocol is consensus driven. If there is an imminent threat of quantum computing, the developers could just improve the code base to resist it. Or fork the protocol to one that is resistant (Bitcoin 2). Then it’s up to 51% of the Bitcoin node operators to adopt the protocol. As soon as 51% of them upgrades, you immediately stop the threat.

I think the only reason Bitcoin is around is for two reasons: speculation, or the persons that actually believe it’s decentralised hard money free from control. I’d like to believe that there are a ton of people out there that run the BTC nodes to keep it decentralised. If there is an update that will resist quantum computing, I’m sure they’ll be eager to immediately upgrade their nodes and secure the network and those wallets. At least that’s how I believe it works, it’s been years since I first began researching it.

As an aside,
Bitcoin isn’t for me because I hate the environment impact. I hope one day it will become green, because it’s never going to go away. But I don’t blame the people that believe in it. In a world where the rich own everything and control the rules, these people are trying to opt out I guess - use a form of money that can’t be easily controlled or censored. Granted it’s all based on speculation, and whenever we run out of Bitcoin is probably when the system will become useless. Spending is discouraged when you run out of coins, so I don’t know how the Bitcoiners defend that argument. So definitely not for me.

Edit, on mobile so fixed some typos and clarified the 51% attack.

This sounds fishy.

What if somebody found out the private key for those accounts? Like, brute forced them?

Is it even technologically possible?

Somebody found their missing hard drive

Bitcoin private keys are 256 bit long. That means, there are 115792089237316195423570985008687907853269984665640564039457584007913129639936 (1.15*10^77) possible private keys.

Say you are using a bitcoin miner that's roughly 4x as fast as the curretly fastest one at 1PH/s (1*10^15), they you'll need roughly 1*10^62 seconds or 3*10^54 years.

Lets say you got a million of these miners, then you are down to 3*10^48 years, or 2*10^38 times as long as the universe has existed.

I was going to calculate how much electricity this would consume and how expensive it would be, but the answer to that is plainly "too much to imagine".

Not even that close. They'll flag any recurring fairly large transactions under 10k.

Bitcoin private keys are 256 bit long. That means, there are 115792089237316195423570985008687907853269984665640564039457584007913129639936 (1.15*10^77) possible private keys.

Say you are using a bitcoin miner that's roughly 4x as fast as the curretly fastest one at 1PH/s (1*10^15), they you'll need roughly 1*10^62 seconds or 3*10^54 years.

Lets say you got a million of these miners, then you are down to 3*10^48 years, or 2*10^38 times as long as the universe has existed.

I was going to calculate how much electricity this would consume and how expensive it would be, but the answer to that is plainly "too much to imagine".

I was going to calculate how much electricity this would consume and how expensive it would be, but the answer to that is plainly “too much to imagine”.

Purely hypothetically speaking, but, what if someone had their own private Dyson Sphere generating electricity? (Asking for a friend.)

This is correct for a given transaction, but there's no consensus needed to open a Bitcoin wallet. That is usually just a private key in an encrypted envelope.

Silk road

Maybe because I'm high, but you just made me ugly laugh on the bus. I just saw fireworks. And now I'm remembering that plan I had to go back to the early 90s, and buy stock in yahoo. But through a telephone error, I ended up buying cases of yoohoo instead. Still worth it. I got to go back in time and see a micheal jackson concert when he was still black, and a Nirvana concert back before they were heard of.

Still though.....to be a billionaire.

I'm unfamiliar as I've never had such. What counts as re-occuring? Is two payments always considered re-occuring?