How many Bitcoin addresses are there?
The length of bitcoin address is 34 characters and that includes letters and numbers. So to calculate total number of addresses possible using combination formula:
24- Upper case letters from A to Z, 24- Lower case letters from A to Z, and 10 numbers.
Total number of bitcoin addresses possible are: 58^34 = approx 9 x 10^59 addresses.
That's approximately equal to Novemdecillion possible combinations according to US scale of numbers.
To put things in little perspective, assuming there are 6 Billion people on earth ,then each person can own 9x 10^59 divide by 10^9 = 9 x 10^50 bitcoin addresses.
In other words, each person on this planet can own Sexdecillion bitcoin addresses. That's more than total number of sand grains in the entire planet earth. To conclude we will never really run out of unique bitcoin addresses to use!!
So if I forget my bitcoin address, it will be really hard to guess...
Let's see, 9x1059 combinations, If I guess 100,000,000 combinations per sec ( = 108 combinations per sec) it would only take about 9x1051 seconds.
Hmmm... 60 sec per minute x 60 min per hr x 24 hr per day x 365 days per year = 31,536,000 seconds per year. ( = approx 3x107 sec/yr)
9x1051 seconds / (3x107 seconds per year) = 3x1044 years.
uh oh, I'll need to speed thing up a bit.
To try all combinations in 30 years, I need to check 9x1059 / (30 years x 3x107 sec/yr) = 1051 combinations per sec for 30 years.
Yikes!
Wow!
That's really fascinating and crazy calculations btw :D
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