simple Python3 script guesses keys for the top P2PKH addresses.
if you win, you are now a co-owner of that wallet and can spend the coins as your own.
requires ecdsa. as root, use pip3 install ecdsa, or on Debian and its
derivatives you can apt install python3-ecdsa.
to run, simply make, ./slotmachine.py, or python3 slotmachine.py.
chances are infinitesimal, but if you win you win big: most of these wallets have many millions of dollars in them, and some have billions.
note: even if you guessed a key that generates the wallet address, the chances that you guessed the same private key as the original address holder are also infinitesimal: about 1 in 2^96 (a huge number: 79228162514264337593543950336), but since the hash matches, and you can prove that, the coins are still counted as yours. note that this is only true for funds held in P2PKH (Pay to Public Key Hash) transactions. for P2PK (Pay to Public Key) transactions you instead need a matching public key. for reference, see Chris Moore's comments on this Bitcoin question.
put another way, you have one chance in 2^160, or 1 in 1461501637330902918203684832716283019655932542976, of scoring any one of the wallet addresses, but only one chance in 2^256, or 1 in 115792089237316195423570985008687907853269984665640564039457584007913129639936, of getting that address's original public/private key pair.
although everyone participating in Bitcoin should know the risks, many don't, and will be furious with anyone "stealing" their coins this way. plus, I don't expect the courts will get it right the first few cases either. probably better just keep quiet about it if you win. treat it as if you found a billion dollars in cash while walking down the street: stuff it in your knapsack, shut up, and walk on nonchalantly.
a better source of addresses may be https://gz.blockchair.com/bitcoin/addresses/blockchair_bitcoin_addresses_latest.tsv.gz, updated weekly. you can use
this list automatically by using make slots instead of just make. it takes
longer to load, however.
may be helpful for other versions of windows as well...
you will need to get ecdsa from the webpage at https://pypi.org/project/ecdsa/#files, unless you can get pip installed (I could not). you should be able to
tar xvf ecdsa-0.17.0.tar.gz and python setup.py in the resulting directory to install the module.
make sure to install Termux using f-droid; the Play Store version is fubar. or
at least, if you don't want to mess with the Play Store version, run
termux-change-repo, select all sources, and switch to A1batross, so you
have a working repository.
the Termux hashlib doesn't support RIPEMD160 as of this writing. install my
fork of the insecure pycrypto module instead using
pip install git+https://github.com/jcomeauictx/pycrypto. if you're wondering
why I didn't instead use the recommendations on pycrypto's webpage, it's
because I didn't even look at it until just now updating the README. it was
easier for me just to add the necessary macro to pycrypto's setup.py.
make PYLINT=echo fast
pip doesn't work, or at least I couldn't get it to work: using --index-url https://pypi.python.org/simple fails without telling you why, but if you look in $HOME/.pip/pip.log you'll see HTTP Error 403: SNI is required.
so, you have to fetch both six and ecdsa from pypi.org with a browser, as mentioned above under Windows Vista, and install them in that order. then it will run using make PYLINT=echo PY_VER=2 fast.
