Probability of typing a wrong Bitcoin address
12 days ago
- #Cryptography
- #Security
- #Bitcoin
- Bitcoin addresses have checksums that make typos resulting in valid addresses extremely rare (1 in 2^32).
- Addresses are randomly distributed due to cryptographic hash functions, making typos no more likely to hit another valid address than random input.
- There's a negligible chance (1 in 10^39) that a random 160-bit sequence matches a used Bitcoin address.
- The probability of two Bitcoin addresses being one or two character swaps apart is very low, even considering a billion addresses.
- The Birthday Problem analogy shows that collisions between addresses (including typos) are highly unlikely in the vast address space.