Why you should have multiple crypto wallets

Hi frens,

Here’s the statement: You should have multiple crypto wallets. It’s not merely for your privacy, but also for your wallet security.

Have you ever wonder, what if I generated a crypto wallet, and it happened to be in use by other person, with funds in it? After all, the whole generating process doesn’t require online authorization (and it can’t be) at all, but just cryptography.

Here’s an extremely simplified estimation: An Ethereum address consists of 40 characters, each of which can be any of the 16 hexadecimal digits (0-9 or a-f). So, the total number of possible Ethereum addresses is 16⁴⁰, which is approximately equal to 1.46150164×10⁴⁸. Let’s take it as 10⁴⁸.

It’s too hard to imagine how enormous the number is. Let’s have a concrete example.

There is estimated 1,386 million cubic kilometers (km³) of water on earth, which is 1.386×10²⁴ ml (cm³). Let’s take it as 10²⁴ ml water on one earth.

So, finding one Ethereum address across all possibilities is roughly like, finding 1 ml of water on 10²⁴ earths.

Still too abstract? Here’s another physics fact: 1mL of water = 3.34×10²² of H²O molecules (if you forget how to get this, ask ChatGPT).

So it’s roughly like, finding 1 water molecule on 10²⁴ / 3.34×10²² ≈ 30 earths.

Global Images of Earth (source)

Then, whats the possibility of generating a wallet address already in use? Currently, there are reportedly near 250M unique addresses, i.e. 2.5×10⁸ address. That’s around 2.5×10⁸ / 3.34×10²² ≈ 10^-14 = 0.00000000000001 ml.

How hard it is to tap into the 0.00000000000001 ml of water on 30 earths? Nearly impossible. That’s why you’d never generate a wallet address already in use.

However…

What if you generated a wallet address with Trust Wallet (browser extension version) during 2022/11/14 - 23? I hope you’ve transferred the assets. Those addresses are all vulnerable.

Due to a vulnerable implementation, investigated by Ledger Labs, the specific version of Trust Wallet only generated addresses within a specific ml of water.

All these mnemonics can be generated in a couple of hours in a single computer.

Possibility of getting hacked for those addresses? 100%.

Fortunately, this vulnerability was fixed and the hacked assets were reimbursed.

However, could we be impacted by the next vulnerability? Who knows!

That’s why we should have multiple crypto wallets, from different wallet vendors, and keep your assets separated, just in case.

Your friend,

Denken