OONA 13 · TIMECLOCK

searching infinity

a clock that may chime now, or in a number of universe-ages so large that "never" feels like a smaller, simpler word for it. every tick is a fresh random guess at the private key for a single bitcoin address that no one holds the key to.

— — —

keys drawn from infinity

heartbeat 10/secyour tab 0/secbest so far 0 of 160 bits

jackpot

$ —

fetching live balance…

locked in 1111111111111111111114oLvT2 — a bitcoin address with no known key

terms ↗

or guess one yourself

type anything — a word, a phrase, a passphrase, a number. we hash it into a 32-byte private key, derive the bitcoin address, and show you where you landed. every guess is independent.

how long is "forever," exactly

if you'd been guessing one key per second since the big bang, you'd have made about 4.4 × 10¹⁷ attempts — roughly 1 part in 3.3 × 10³⁰ of the search space.universe age ≈ 13.8 × 10⁹ years

if every grain of sand on earth had been guessing one key per second since the big bang, together they'd have covered about 1 in 447 billion of the keys.~7.5 × 10¹⁸ grains

a stack of every possible key, 1 mm per row, would reach across the observable universe 1.7 quintilliontimes.diameter ≈ 93 billion light-years

for every possible private key, the earth contains about 91 atoms. finding the right one is like picking out one specific atom from roughly 1.1% of the planet.~1.33 × 10⁵⁰ atoms in earth

and yet — every tick is independent. the trillionth guess has exactly the same odds as the first. the math is flat. the universe owes you no average.someone is always taking that bet.

how this works

every bitcoin address is the public face of a private key — a random 256-bit number that no one can predict, including the address that originally generated it. there are about 2¹⁶⁰ distinct addresses, and we're searching for the one private key whose public-key hash is exactly twenty zero bytes — a recognizable destination, but one with no shortcut to its key.

so we just guess. each tick of the clock draws a fresh random 32-byte number, derives its secp256k1 public key, and hashes it with RIPEMD-160(SHA-256(pub)). if the result is twenty zeros, the clock chimes. it almost certainly won't.

the server keeps a slow heartbeat going around the clock; your tab, if you boost it, contributes additional throughput at no cost to anyone but your CPU. on average, neither helps. but the average isn't the bet. every tick is independent — the trillionth guess has exactly the same odds as the first, and the universe owes you no average. someone, somewhere, is always taking that bet. it might be you. it might be now.

OONA 13 · TIMECLOCK · terms