if you could collide a privkey ("master"? idk much about bitcoin beyond "stuff on top of basic public key crypto")
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then you could act just as the owner for all purposes (aside whatever other validation methods may exist again idk)
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the important bit is the "if" is, colliding a 256-bit keyspace requires 2^128 computations
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which is "all current computers working past heat death of the universe" type shit
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the thing about powers of two is each addition to the exponent is a doubling
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this sounds obvious but thing to stress is people don't have intuitions about this unless they work with it a lot
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it's too vast, outside of everyday experience, like contemplating astronomical distances
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I like to illustrate this "holy fuck" feeling with unix time
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32-bit unix time (that is, a number incrementing every second up to 2^32 [well, signed but it doesn't matter])
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can keep going for ~140 years. this is the "year 2038 problem" when 32-bit timestamps roll over
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a 64-bit number (that is, 32 additional doublings past the first 32) can cover ~580 billion years
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Replying to @alicemazzy @frogstoyevsky
so what you're saying is .... there's a chance
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