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     7 years ago (edited)

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    Question: How many unique bitcoin addresses are possible?

    Answer: 2160 ..or 1,461,501,637,330,902,918,203,684,832,716,283,019,655,932,542,976 unique addresses

    That is a big ass number, but how can you visualize such a large number? In truth it is impossible for the human brain to properly and completely visualize an astronomical number like this, but let's try anyways. I picked up this visualization exercise from someone else but I can't honestly remember who it was. (Antonopoulos maybe?) Anyway, here it is..

    Next time you're at the beach, pick up a handful of sand. How many grains are you holding in your hand? Now look up and down the shoreline as far as you can see in both directions and try to fathom the astronomically large number of grains of sand that comprise the entire beach. Already, this is a number virtually too large to fully comprehend. Ok, now imagine in your mind being able to zoom out above the Earth, just like on Google maps, until you can see the whole continent you are on and now the number of grains of sand contained within all the beaches of that continent. Truly unimaginable, but now zoom all the way out and try to imagine how many grains of sand there are in every beach on the entire planet! It's a number seemingly infinite like the stars in the universe but the number is, in fact, finite. There are an estimated 263 (or about 7 Quintilian) grains of sand on planet Earth, much much less than the number of potential bitcoin addresses. Now take all those grains of sand, every single one, and now imagine that each grain of sand is now... a whole new planet Earth! Now, finally, if you add up all the grains of sand in all the Earths you will be somewhere in the ballpark of 2160.
    This is not a useful exercise, just something fun to think about.

    Back to work!

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