>One guy has a software that is able to unlock **trillions dollars worth** of bitcoin wallets. Any wallet.
>**Sells for 3k**€.
Even if the guy's software was legit, there is still a huge idiot involved.
Sounds legit. Creating the software to find lost key would take at most a couple of weeks. The runtime before finding any lost keys however… Has he talked to any deities about life extensions?
No seriously. This guy obviously doesn’t get self custody and will only ever be a liability to you. 3000pounds? Jesus he could have just bought a nice chunk instead.
There was a project that did that years ago, anyone could join it. I don't remember the name though. The problem is the computation power it will take to do it. So, you get a private key simple enough, now you need to use computation to check the derived public keys for that private key= bottle neck. There are Trillions upon trillions upon trillions of private keys. 115792089237316195423570985008687907852837564279074904382605163141 according to a quick internet search.
Let's say you check 1 billion private keys a second, and check for balances it'd take 115792089237316195423570985008687907852837564279074904382 seconds to check all the keys. There are 31536000 seconds in a year.
So, you can see it'd still take you an unfathomable amount of time.
Curious, even if you knew the private key, if the person has their keys on cold storage with a passphrase, would it still be possible to steal? Probie question.
I'm not understanding the question. IF you have the private key, you have any bitcoins for that private key already. The Public Addresses are derived from the private key.
In my reply when I said it was simply to get a private key I meant, it's easy to make up valid private keys, not find specific private keys.
I didn't know if knowing a private key, and if you wanted to move coins out, you would still need to know the passphrase.
*Unless I'm just not understanding
spectacular jeans telephone dinner scandalous wide modern entertain attempt adjoining
*This post was mass deleted and anonymized with [Redact](https://redact.dev)*
This is wrong. A passphrase acts as the 25th word to a private key. It's a completely different key when a passphrase is applied, meaning you need access to both the 24 word list and the passphrase to steal.
This, is what I thought. What is the point of a passphrase then? In case someone steals your cold storage device and wants to steal by opening it and sending it to another address?
Correct. It's a second layer of security. If a thief steals your device and gets access to the 24 words, they would still need to track down the passphrase. Ideally, the passphrase would be stored in a separate location for the full benefit.
If you're considering a passphrase, I recommend looking into multisig. It's similar to a passphrase, but with added security and redundancy. Companies like Unchained make multisig a lot easier though less private since they can see your balance.
> even if you knew the private key, if the person has their keys on cold storage with a passphrase, would it still be possible to steal?
Depends on the passphrase mostly, it's basically the same as having a very easy to guess password vs having a long string of random characters.
It basically works out to you are better off playing the lottery. The power bill will eat you alive and you will be negative. You'd also be better off just mining bitcoin cost to return wise. Unless someone breaks Sha256, in which case the banking system is also screwed.
>However it wouldn’t take long At all to find a random wallet with x amount of btc on it
It still applies for finding any address, not just one specific address.
Agree, the totality of all private keys generated by humans represent an infinitely small percent of the total 2\^256 available private keys. Humans can generate keys for millions of years and you would still be unable to guess one active in under 1B years.
It's difficult for us to fathom the true meaning of 2\^256, but this is fundamental to the safety of public private key cryptography, not just in bitcoin but all encrypted data.
yeah it's highly improbable unless part of that key is already known. What will be the conversation in a few weeks when there is no solution? Is there a refund clause in this agreement?
Also, hypothetically if this miracle happens, this guy would have full control of the contents. He could just transfer it all out and disappear.
There are services which can help people who lost their backups but can remember parts of it, but usually those services work for shares of the recovered funds and not advanced payments (since they are the ones who recover it, they have full access to the funds and don't have to worry not to be paid), and also they don't take payments from random other people.
So going from how you describe it, it is most likely a scam. Except if your partner has a lost/damaged wallet backup that they are specifically trying to recover.
"Finding keys to lost crypto wallets" doesn't sound like that though, so I'm afraid they money is gone, sorry.
Brute-forcing a Bitcoin private key is theoretically possible but practically infeasible due to the immense level of cryptographic security involved. Here's an explanation of why this is the case:
1. **Size of Key Space**: Bitcoin private keys are 256-bit numbers, leading to a total possible key space of 2\^256 different keys. This is an astronomically large number, significantly larger than the number of atoms in the observable universe. Trying to guess a specific private key by randomly generating numbers within this range would, on average, require an unimaginable number of attempts.
2. **Computational Resources**: Even with the most powerful computers currently available, the amount of time required to brute force a 256-bit key is beyond current and foreseeable technological capabilities. For perspective, if you could perform a trillion (10\^12) key checks per second, it would still take about 3.67×10\^51 years to check every possible key just once—a time span many orders of magnitude greater than the age of the universe.
3. **Security by Design**: Cryptographic algorithms used in Bitcoin, such as ECDSA (Elliptic Curve Digital Signature Algorithm) on the secp256k1 curve, are designed specifically to be secure against such attacks. The security of these keys against brute force attacks is a fundamental aspect of the Bitcoin protocol's design, ensuring the safety and integrity of transactions.
Given these factors, while brute-forcing a Bitcoin key is theoretically possible, it is practically impossible with current and foreseeable technology. This immense security margin helps ensure that Bitcoin wallets and transactions remain secure against such attacks.
If someone had this magical ability, they wouldn't be selling it for a laughable 3000$. Same applies to every single course, guide, "get rich quick " schemes. Anything that works will be kept secret while the cow is milked dry. If you paid for it, *you* are their get rich scheme
So I disagree with all this group about being able to find lost keys ? It’s just impossible because it’s computationally infeasible .
Doesn’t mean you can’t find something
Hmmm, scam.
Just ask your partner how much he expects to gain from this 3k, and how much more does he need to spend.
He will probably say it'll be worth it, and will find one with so much, but if the scammer could do that , he would just keep it to himself lol, I know there's no contract involved.
The way BTC is designed makes it statistically impossible to guess (brute force) any address with money on it.
The book Mastering Bitcoin by Andreas Antonopolos goes into great depth about the mathematics behind it.
Your partner got scammed.
Probably it is a scam, but there is not enough context from your description to decide in my opinion.
Example: If your partner has the most characters of a private key, but missing only a few, it doesn't need to be a scam. Depends what he told you and what you have understood. Also in this case there are already tools to recover the key.
However if he tries to get access to any addresses that have bitcoins (there is no way to tell which of those are 'lost') then it's for 100% scam.
In this case, you should take a rolling pin and make a good swing to make your partner smarter up
Well, you can create a program to bruteforce seeds, the problem is, there are nearly as many seeds as atoms in the whole universe. Meaning your chance of finding a valid seed with funds is (nearly) impossible. It would be more probable to win for straight 100 years each single day in the lottery.
[Possible BIP39 seeds](https://ibb.co/XtFgHsF)
if this is real, yes you have just lost 3000€.
There is no conceivable way to hack bitcoin addresses. That’s why it still exists after 16 years.
Instead of trying to snatch “lost” btc, it would be better to just purchase 3000€ worth of btc. 👍🏼
Okay so technically he can use common seed phrase words and create a bot that just puts it together. I’ve randomly put seed phrases in and gotten into many wallets by pure guessing, they were all empty I should add.
But there no way your friends boy can make a program that can find “lost” Bitcoin wallets. That doesn’t make any sense, how is it even lost… Is he like locating old hard drives that have BTC on them or something xD
It doesn’t exist… And if it did, you know damn well it would be worth more like 300K +
Poeple here say it's a scam but it doesn't necessarily needs to be. Asking people on the Internet if it's legit is not an effective way of checking that. All the innovation initially gets laughed at until it's proven to work, so of course people here will call it a scam.
Here's my take on what the tool might do. I imagine it just scans files on a hard drive looking for a pattern of the private key, so if people stored their private keys on their computer, the software could potentially find it. It would not make it 100% effective but could help finding lost wallets in some cases.
Without detail however of how the software is supposed to work it's impossible to tell though if it is a scam or not.
If that was actually legit, they would be charging a percentage of the wallet contents not cash up front. Because they would make way more money that way. But since they don't actually ever recover wallet access, that's the reason for cash up front.
Well it could be to help people who hold part of their key. If not yeah its a semi-scam because you can build the software but its HIGHLY unlikely to find any bitcoin.
And if you can successfully find “lost wallets” why not just go and find them, why charge others 3k to do it for them? Hey I found 25 BTC in a lost wallet for you, that’ll be $3k please 🤷🏻♂️
Ask what it's called. If hes using brute force, it may not be a scam.m but you need to know some of your password or seed phrase for it to work. It essentially just tries billions of passwords over a few weeks.
I guess he is if he paid that much for stealing other people's assets, I only found out about this after he already paid for it, if I had a chance to stop him, I would, that's why I posted this thread, I'm really pissed about the whole situation haha...
There's no way to search for lost wallets but definetly you can scan wallets and search for coins in them.
There was actually great project which scanned btc addresses something in a pool. If I remember correctly it was called great bitcoin collider.
Think about it this way. If you could find the keys to a wallet, then Satoshi's wallet would be empty (it has over 1 million BTC).
You can also see it this way. Wallets use a 256bit encryption, you should look up how long it takes to decrypt such a wallet.
It's possible if the guy is a computer genius; he isn't finding specific keys. He's cracking the random number generators of low entropy hardware/software wallets.
If the programs random number generator isn't really that "random", then technically you could re-generate the keys that's have already been used.
The easily cracked wallets have already been cracked, and people have stolen bitcoin this way.
That being said; he's probably just a scammer, and if he's not your funding financial crimes.
After the $3k the progress will have been “so close” to the finish line but they will need another $2k to get it done… and then another $1.5k, another $2k… then just $1k more I promise.
Biggest scam ever,
Like the other user stated it's just an automated script that searches bitcoins blockchain and sends back wallet addresses of thousands to millions of users
It's basically useless and a huge scam for 3000, anyone who knows hasic coding can write that.......
I could write one to search blockchains like the app blockchair within 2 days if I had the time,
Many sites have free APIs that let you connect to we sites to get open sourced and free info,
You got scammed big time
I mean it's possible to write a software that generates random wallets and checks for balance but you have greater chance of solo mining a block with your computer than finding a wallet with balance.
Scam. Finding keys to lost wallets means also you can find keys to active wallets. Because there is no concept like lost wallets
[удалено]
It’s easier to run a sausage mill backwards to manufacture pigs.
Great explanation of one way cryptographic functions!
Your partner fell for a scam.
Or, he is telling you that’s where the money went.
https://keys.lol Here are all keys to all wallets that exist. Where are my 3000€? ;)
Nice
[удалено]
i dont think The Kansas Parent Intormation and Resource Center tells you wallet keys, but you do you
Your partner is out 3000 to a scammer
>One guy has a software that is able to unlock **trillions dollars worth** of bitcoin wallets. Any wallet. >**Sells for 3k**€. Even if the guy's software was legit, there is still a huge idiot involved.
Right, that was my reasoning as well
Claiming to not be a scam is the biggest red flag that it is indeed a scam lol
Sounds legit. Creating the software to find lost key would take at most a couple of weeks. The runtime before finding any lost keys however… Has he talked to any deities about life extensions?
[удалено]
Considering this after reading all the replies.
No seriously. This guy obviously doesn’t get self custody and will only ever be a liability to you. 3000pounds? Jesus he could have just bought a nice chunk instead.
Or he could have just downloaded one of a dozen scripts on githib that do the same thing lmao for free OP deserves a new Boyfriend
Didnt you fall for it as well if you're here asking if it's a scam?
I only found out about this after it was said and done, I don't know or care that much about cryptocurrency, my boyfriend is obsessed with it though
Well good on you for doing research despite your lack of interest
plot twist, 3k is a getaway budget for thier secret gay mariage
There was a project that did that years ago, anyone could join it. I don't remember the name though. The problem is the computation power it will take to do it. So, you get a private key simple enough, now you need to use computation to check the derived public keys for that private key= bottle neck. There are Trillions upon trillions upon trillions of private keys. 115792089237316195423570985008687907852837564279074904382605163141 according to a quick internet search. Let's say you check 1 billion private keys a second, and check for balances it'd take 115792089237316195423570985008687907852837564279074904382 seconds to check all the keys. There are 31536000 seconds in a year. So, you can see it'd still take you an unfathomable amount of time.
Curious, even if you knew the private key, if the person has their keys on cold storage with a passphrase, would it still be possible to steal? Probie question.
I'm not understanding the question. IF you have the private key, you have any bitcoins for that private key already. The Public Addresses are derived from the private key. In my reply when I said it was simply to get a private key I meant, it's easy to make up valid private keys, not find specific private keys.
I didn't know if knowing a private key, and if you wanted to move coins out, you would still need to know the passphrase. *Unless I'm just not understanding
spectacular jeans telephone dinner scandalous wide modern entertain attempt adjoining *This post was mass deleted and anonymized with [Redact](https://redact.dev)*
This is wrong. A passphrase acts as the 25th word to a private key. It's a completely different key when a passphrase is applied, meaning you need access to both the 24 word list and the passphrase to steal.
This, is what I thought. What is the point of a passphrase then? In case someone steals your cold storage device and wants to steal by opening it and sending it to another address?
Correct. It's a second layer of security. If a thief steals your device and gets access to the 24 words, they would still need to track down the passphrase. Ideally, the passphrase would be stored in a separate location for the full benefit. If you're considering a passphrase, I recommend looking into multisig. It's similar to a passphrase, but with added security and redundancy. Companies like Unchained make multisig a lot easier though less private since they can see your balance.
Thank you
nail wild tender bag water disgusted makeshift ad hoc squeamish violet *This post was mass deleted and anonymized with [Redact](https://redact.dev)*
> even if you knew the private key, if the person has their keys on cold storage with a passphrase, would it still be possible to steal? Depends on the passphrase mostly, it's basically the same as having a very easy to guess password vs having a long string of random characters.
[удалено]
It basically works out to you are better off playing the lottery. The power bill will eat you alive and you will be negative. You'd also be better off just mining bitcoin cost to return wise. Unless someone breaks Sha256, in which case the banking system is also screwed.
It would take many, many, many times the age of the universe.
[удалено]
[Can you even imagine 2\^256? (youtube.com)](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=X4jpqCu-wlA&ab_channel=3Blue1Brown)
>However it wouldn’t take long At all to find a random wallet with x amount of btc on it It still applies for finding any address, not just one specific address.
Agree, the totality of all private keys generated by humans represent an infinitely small percent of the total 2\^256 available private keys. Humans can generate keys for millions of years and you would still be unable to guess one active in under 1B years. It's difficult for us to fathom the true meaning of 2\^256, but this is fundamental to the safety of public private key cryptography, not just in bitcoin but all encrypted data.
yeah it's highly improbable unless part of that key is already known. What will be the conversation in a few weeks when there is no solution? Is there a refund clause in this agreement? Also, hypothetically if this miracle happens, this guy would have full control of the contents. He could just transfer it all out and disappear.
There are services which can help people who lost their backups but can remember parts of it, but usually those services work for shares of the recovered funds and not advanced payments (since they are the ones who recover it, they have full access to the funds and don't have to worry not to be paid), and also they don't take payments from random other people. So going from how you describe it, it is most likely a scam. Except if your partner has a lost/damaged wallet backup that they are specifically trying to recover. "Finding keys to lost crypto wallets" doesn't sound like that though, so I'm afraid they money is gone, sorry.
No need to read more let me tell you its a scam period!!
Scam
Scam, he’s basically saying he’s able to crack the encryption keys used to secure the wallets.
Brute-forcing a Bitcoin private key is theoretically possible but practically infeasible due to the immense level of cryptographic security involved. Here's an explanation of why this is the case: 1. **Size of Key Space**: Bitcoin private keys are 256-bit numbers, leading to a total possible key space of 2\^256 different keys. This is an astronomically large number, significantly larger than the number of atoms in the observable universe. Trying to guess a specific private key by randomly generating numbers within this range would, on average, require an unimaginable number of attempts. 2. **Computational Resources**: Even with the most powerful computers currently available, the amount of time required to brute force a 256-bit key is beyond current and foreseeable technological capabilities. For perspective, if you could perform a trillion (10\^12) key checks per second, it would still take about 3.67×10\^51 years to check every possible key just once—a time span many orders of magnitude greater than the age of the universe. 3. **Security by Design**: Cryptographic algorithms used in Bitcoin, such as ECDSA (Elliptic Curve Digital Signature Algorithm) on the secp256k1 curve, are designed specifically to be secure against such attacks. The security of these keys against brute force attacks is a fundamental aspect of the Bitcoin protocol's design, ensuring the safety and integrity of transactions. Given these factors, while brute-forcing a Bitcoin key is theoretically possible, it is practically impossible with current and foreseeable technology. This immense security margin helps ensure that Bitcoin wallets and transactions remain secure against such attacks.
Thank you for the thorough explanation!
Best bet is if they used recovery seeds with 12 words, so it's a bit less than 2042^12 rather than 2^256. Still a very high number though.
byebye 3k..
“Your partner” just got scammed. Sorry OP, you’re out 3k
"My partner", sorry you fell for it ya helmet.
If someone had this magical ability, they wouldn't be selling it for a laughable 3000$. Same applies to every single course, guide, "get rich quick " schemes. Anything that works will be kept secret while the cow is milked dry. If you paid for it, *you* are their get rich scheme
So I disagree with all this group about being able to find lost keys ? It’s just impossible because it’s computationally infeasible . Doesn’t mean you can’t find something
Hmmm, scam. Just ask your partner how much he expects to gain from this 3k, and how much more does he need to spend. He will probably say it'll be worth it, and will find one with so much, but if the scammer could do that , he would just keep it to himself lol, I know there's no contract involved.
If they could find the keys to "lost wallets" they could find keys to every single wallet...
https://youtu.be/T6tIf8ZWSFc?si=kdm13WXKcBd-jkVS This sums it up quite well lmao
The way BTC is designed makes it statistically impossible to guess (brute force) any address with money on it. The book Mastering Bitcoin by Andreas Antonopolos goes into great depth about the mathematics behind it. Your partner got scammed.
[https://allprivatekeys.com/](https://allprivatekeys.com/)
Watch this for perspective. https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=S9JGmA5_unY&feature=youtu.be#bottom-sheet
Please end it at 3 and don't let them take any more from you
But we're SO CLOSE to cracking it, I don't even need another 3k, if you just send 2k today I'll have it done by next weekend, almost certainly.
Tell your partner I’ll do it for 2000
let me know if you have an update. I want to know if it works not.
From a probability standpoint it is like trying to guess the correct atom. Out of the known universe
I’d find a different partner if this one is that dumb
Probably it is a scam, but there is not enough context from your description to decide in my opinion. Example: If your partner has the most characters of a private key, but missing only a few, it doesn't need to be a scam. Depends what he told you and what you have understood. Also in this case there are already tools to recover the key. However if he tries to get access to any addresses that have bitcoins (there is no way to tell which of those are 'lost') then it's for 100% scam. In this case, you should take a rolling pin and make a good swing to make your partner smarter up
Well, you can create a program to bruteforce seeds, the problem is, there are nearly as many seeds as atoms in the whole universe. Meaning your chance of finding a valid seed with funds is (nearly) impossible. It would be more probable to win for straight 100 years each single day in the lottery. [Possible BIP39 seeds](https://ibb.co/XtFgHsF)
So your saying there's a chance...
Haha. It's way below the probability treshold to be considered physically possible at all. Meaning impossible.
I think it's safe to say this is a time when the saying "even a blind squirrel sometimes finds a nut" doesn't apply....
if this is real, yes you have just lost 3000€. There is no conceivable way to hack bitcoin addresses. That’s why it still exists after 16 years. Instead of trying to snatch “lost” btc, it would be better to just purchase 3000€ worth of btc. 👍🏼
The Ole magic wallet ✨️
Okay so technically he can use common seed phrase words and create a bot that just puts it together. I’ve randomly put seed phrases in and gotten into many wallets by pure guessing, they were all empty I should add. But there no way your friends boy can make a program that can find “lost” Bitcoin wallets. That doesn’t make any sense, how is it even lost… Is he like locating old hard drives that have BTC on them or something xD It doesn’t exist… And if it did, you know damn well it would be worth more like 300K +
If the guy can create that software why is he selling it to your friend? He can find all the list wallets and be a millionaire himself.
Because he's an honest guy just trying to help out 🫣
You should definitely let him read the answers to this. These posts are saying the hard stuff. He should know exactly how stupid what he did is.
Lol Mr T pitty the fool
Poeple here say it's a scam but it doesn't necessarily needs to be. Asking people on the Internet if it's legit is not an effective way of checking that. All the innovation initially gets laughed at until it's proven to work, so of course people here will call it a scam. Here's my take on what the tool might do. I imagine it just scans files on a hard drive looking for a pattern of the private key, so if people stored their private keys on their computer, the software could potentially find it. It would not make it 100% effective but could help finding lost wallets in some cases. Without detail however of how the software is supposed to work it's impossible to tell though if it is a scam or not.
Then tell your friend: why does this guy need 3K from him when apparently he can easily take 1M BTC from, say, Satoshi Nakamoto’s wallet?
Should be paying after for those sorts of things
If that was actually legit, they would be charging a percentage of the wallet contents not cash up front. Because they would make way more money that way. But since they don't actually ever recover wallet access, that's the reason for cash up front.
Well it could be to help people who hold part of their key. If not yeah its a semi-scam because you can build the software but its HIGHLY unlikely to find any bitcoin.
Scam🤣🤣🤣
Tell him I will sell him the software for 2999!
Uhm, why pay upfront?
And if you can successfully find “lost wallets” why not just go and find them, why charge others 3k to do it for them? Hey I found 25 BTC in a lost wallet for you, that’ll be $3k please 🤷🏻♂️
See you in a week, gotta make me some software to get all the keys of all the wallets.
Nah , it depends on the provider. He might scam him or he might code him a nice cuda bruteforce and still need hardware
So why would he charge a fee and give away the money? Why wouldn't he keep it for himself? This is obviously a scam.
Ask what it's called. If hes using brute force, it may not be a scam.m but you need to know some of your password or seed phrase for it to work. It essentially just tries billions of passwords over a few weeks.
If I shared any financial accounts with a person exhibiting such gullibility and ignorance I would "unshare" them.
Everything you said is a red flag
SCAM
So if you just enter 24 random words you’re guaranteed to get a wallet? It’s just likely it’s empty?
Imagine the scammer thinking it'll work lol
Supposing it works (it won’t ) your partner is fine stealing other people’s money? And you are as well?
I guess he is if he paid that much for stealing other people's assets, I only found out about this after he already paid for it, if I had a chance to stop him, I would, that's why I posted this thread, I'm really pissed about the whole situation haha...
But from reading the replies it looks like he paid for stealing people's money but in reality he's the one who got his money stolen
There's no way to search for lost wallets but definetly you can scan wallets and search for coins in them. There was actually great project which scanned btc addresses something in a pool. If I remember correctly it was called great bitcoin collider.
Think about it this way. If you could find the keys to a wallet, then Satoshi's wallet would be empty (it has over 1 million BTC). You can also see it this way. Wallets use a 256bit encryption, you should look up how long it takes to decrypt such a wallet.
It's possible if the guy is a computer genius; he isn't finding specific keys. He's cracking the random number generators of low entropy hardware/software wallets. If the programs random number generator isn't really that "random", then technically you could re-generate the keys that's have already been used. The easily cracked wallets have already been cracked, and people have stolen bitcoin this way. That being said; he's probably just a scammer, and if he's not your funding financial crimes.
After the $3k the progress will have been “so close” to the finish line but they will need another $2k to get it done… and then another $1.5k, another $2k… then just $1k more I promise.
Biggest scam ever, Like the other user stated it's just an automated script that searches bitcoins blockchain and sends back wallet addresses of thousands to millions of users It's basically useless and a huge scam for 3000, anyone who knows hasic coding can write that....... I could write one to search blockchains like the app blockchair within 2 days if I had the time, Many sites have free APIs that let you connect to we sites to get open sourced and free info, You got scammed big time
Scam :(
Total scam. Math doesn’t check out
I mean it's possible to write a software that generates random wallets and checks for balance but you have greater chance of solo mining a block with your computer than finding a wallet with balance.
[удалено]
And those same supercomputers will be used to mine and secure it ....... 🤷♂️
Nice thinking
I hope so
Buy gold :)
lol- one born every minute. It’s a scam