The discussion around the Sino-Biancheng Bitcoin holdout has been warming again in recent days. According to the previous version of the social platform, it is possible to obtain a sum of bitcoin worth about $70 billion, provided that the private key or assistive word is randomly guessed. The technologists then pointed out that the claim ignored the basic fact that the Bitcoin Key System was virtually non-operational in reality.
The size of the holder becomes more focused.
Arkham Intelligence, a web-based data platform, estimates that China has a total of about 109.66 million BTCs. The corresponding market value was approximately $7,043 million, based on quoted prices of $64,245. This size has long been considered one of the most interesting sleeping silos in the Bitcoin market.
However, the core of this round of discussions is not the size of the hold-up itself, but the question of whether these assets can be obtained through violent detachment. The point was made that the problem was reduced to 24 words in successive guesses, but the researchers were of the view that the formulation itself was inaccurate.
Not a set of assistive words to control.
According to technologists, Chinese early currency holding was not managed by a single set of modern assistive words. The common wallet aid term BIP-39 appears later today, and between 2009 and 2010 the bitcoin key generation was different.
It was reported that the assets were scattered among more than 22,000 early P2PK addresses, the Pay-to-Public-Key address. In other words, even if the attackers had theoretical ability to decipher, it was not the breaking of a wallet that would have touched all assets, but would have confronted a large number of separate independent addresses.
The cost of violence is far beyond reality.
Researchers estimate that, even if computing devices generate 1 trillion combinations per second, it takes about 1.8 years to find a particular 24-word assistive word at a 50 per cent probability, well above the age of the universe of about 13.8 billion.
This is also the reason why the technical community quickly rejected the claim. The security of the Bitcoin network is not dependent on “no one to guess”, but rather on an extremely large key space, making violence meaningless under realistic conditions.
The market could still react quickly if there were any variation in the addresses of those sleeping for more than 15 years. The reason is not that the private key was guessed, but that the long unused bitcoin itself had a strong symbolic significance and a liquidity shock expectation.
Discussion extended to self-custody security
The debate also brought back the hardware wallet design. In the discussion, Hashcash inventor Adam Back indicated that some hardware wallet manufacturers would build their equipment structures on a more general support programme in order to accommodate a large number of silos.
In his view, such an approach could weaken specialized support for the original security characteristics of thebitcoin. By comparison, it is easier to support only more streamlined equipment designs in bitcoin and to isolate the additional risks posed by third-party technologies.
This view does not change the ecology of the existing wallets of Bitcoin, but reflects the continuing disagreement within the industry over the trade-off between “multi-assets compatibility” and “single asset security priority”.