I wonder if it ever becomes viable to try to brute-force the private key of such a valuable address, rather than devoting the brute force power to mining.<p>Edit: got curious and found an answer: <a href="http://bitcoin.stackexchange.com/questions/2847/how-long-would-it-take-a-large-computer-to-crack-a-private-key" rel="nofollow">http://bitcoin.stackexchange.com/questions/2847/how-long-wou...</a><p>If I understand correctly, it's still not viable even if you tried your brute-forced keys on all addresses in the network.
Here's the cited paper from UCSD on bitcoin address analysis:<p><a href="http://cseweb.ucsd.edu/~smeiklejohn/files/imc13.pdf" rel="nofollow">http://cseweb.ucsd.edu/~smeiklejohn/files/imc13.pdf</a>
This reminds me of when actual users were identified from the "anonymous" AOL search logs.<p><a href="http://www.nytimes.com/2006/08/09/technology/09aol.html?pagewanted=all&_r=0" rel="nofollow">http://www.nytimes.com/2006/08/09/technology/09aol.html?page...</a><p>Anonymity is not privacy.
I haven't been following closely, but could it have been the FBI transferring Silk Road funds to their own address? Given the timing that seems to make sense.
Today's goals:<p>* Spend 100 million for supercomputers to compute this address's wallet in one day.<p>* Acquire said wallet.<p>* Reimburse my 100 million debt.<p>* Enjoy my 50 millions.<p>Anybody got supercomputers?
This type of "sophisticated analysis" will be useless whenever zerocoin is proven as a viable addition to the protocol. True anonymity is scary from a regulatory standpoint but extremely desirable to many others.
Anyone know where I can get one of those bitcoin keychains in the picture? :)<p>Edit: Found it, <a href="http://bkeychain.com/buy.html" rel="nofollow">http://bkeychain.com/buy.html</a> ($12??)