FAQ says it's possible to use vanitygen to search for a match to a complete address yet when I input a complete address I get an "is too long" error message. Is there a way to run vanitygen using a complete public address?
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1related: Is it possible to brute force bitcoin address creation in order to steal money? --- Is Each Bitcoin Address Unique?– Murch ♦Commented Feb 2, 2014 at 1:16
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Thanks but just wanted to know how to run vanitygen without getting an error. I would like to run it on my own addresses to test how secure they really are?– user13003Commented Feb 2, 2014 at 12:13
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I assume you are the person that created this question. If you still are logged in from another computer, perhaps you could edit your question to clarify your intent. Concerning your "test", I don't see how you would be able to proof anything, except that your personal computer isn't sufficient to find a hash collision in "X" tries, where "X" will get larger over time, but remain magnitudes of magnitudes away from proofing something. IMHO it is not an expedient approach, rather it's a complete waste of energy.– Murch ♦Commented Feb 2, 2014 at 13:19
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4 Answers
It's so unlikely to succeed that it is not being offered. One could be tempted to say it's not possible:
Your chances are along the lines of 1 to 2^160. That is 1 to 4.666587*10^172, or very roughly rounded, 1 to 5 followed by 172 zeroes.
To put that in perspective, if you could create a billion addresses per second, the expected time to find a collision would still be longer than the age of the universe.
The basic answer is: "It's not impossible" but "It's improbable" to do so. You'll make more BTC's on average mining, rather than trying to crack a public address with a vanity generator.
Like Murch said, the possibility of finding the same address is: 1 to 4.6 x 10^172
While getting struck by lightning twice is: 1 to 3.6 x 10^11
Statistically talking, you'll probably die before you can even come close finding the same public address.
Kudos,
-Beşir
Well this website has a list of all Bitcoin addresses and their private keys:
Of course this is a joke, and it doesn't really have them, it just generates them on request.
If you want it to match the exact address - it's far better to just edit the .cl kernel file so that it will verify the public key directly instead of converting it to an address and then comparing it. This would also increase the rate with which it is finding keys.
That said - this exercise is futile, as it is virtually impossible to stumble on the same private key as someone else.
I see everyone's answers are more about how it's unlikely to be done and not about exactly how to enter an address to match without an error since the prefix cannot be an entire address I've noticed. I have been looking for the same thing to make sure I'm doing it right but I believe you use -r (space) (address you want to match) hit enter. It doesn't give you a time or how long only how many keys per second it's going through, which is a lot, and how many total have been covered.
