Who really holds the key?

I've come across the whole 1000 BTC reward thing for breaking private keys. It's got me thinking... If someone actually manages to break into a BTC address with a key, do they then own those coins? I’ve been looking into the details of the bounty and it’s like a battle of good and evil in my mind. Apart from the moral side of things, are there laws that protect you if someone just copies your private key out of the blue? How exactly does one truly own a key?

Bitcoins are protected by the laws of mathematics. Nobody randomly recreates a randomly generated privately key.

I'm no lawyer, but seems to me there ain't really any laws yet dealing with newfangled digital coins like cryptocurrencies specifically.  But we can take a look at the legal framework around regular physical stuff people find and draw some parallels maybe.  Way I understand it, whether you get to keep something you find depends on the details,  like how and where did you find it, what is it exactly and whats legal in your jurisdiction.    General rule of thumb is if whatever it was got abandoned - as in, the owner done gave up on getting it back and said sayonara - then finder's keepers.  You find it, it's yours now. Few exceptions though.  Say it's property whats been lost, just misplaced accidental-like and the owner still aims to come back for it.  Or it's stolen goods that got taken without permission.  Then finding it don't entitle you to squat. So in the case of cryptocurrencies it'd come down to the specifics I reckon.  If theyre truly abandoned with no chance the owner tries tracking them down again, you could argue they're legally yours now.  But if they're lost or stolen, probably not.  Of course, that's just my casual understanding.  Like I said, aint no lawyer here.

@IdMineThat Hello My view is on puzzle 1000 BTC is creator is in this forum and watching. It was started as puzzle 32 BTC from private key range 1 to 160 bit . as you know creator recharged unsolved puzzle to match current market price with another 872 BTC at 16-04-2023. Rule is simple, use your coding skill solve math and take price. There is no risk of having such key and collecting price when its given as rewards. Puzzle is specially designed for bit range 1 to 160 . In normal world any secure platform wallet will provide you full 256 bit private key which is much more secure.. But if someone hacked/stolen/cheated for any BTC private key it must be considered illegal may face criminal charges depending on real private key owner country. Puzzle also show reality that no one can yet break 160 bit of private key in Bitcoin.

You can not clone a private key. Cloning is used in biology or something medically related and not in cryptocurrencies. You own a key by generating the keys yourself. Your wallet can do that. You can not be able to crack bitcoin private key, not to talk of either you own the coins or not.

I have studied some practice on stolen bitcoins and I think that if you are an ordinary user and your cryptocurrency is stolen using a phishing site, viros, deception on social networks and the like, then getting your coins back is practically impossible. The police will not return your coins because they will be spent quickly. Exchanges and projects prefer to pay bounty rewards to hackers from 5 to 20% and not contact the police.

Random and clone were a poor choice of words. Let's say that someone hashed something, a book, a phrase, a word, etc... and used that hash as a private key to generate an address. You happen to generate the same private key, in the same manner. If there is a balance on that address, and you have the key, do you own it? The mantra, "Not your keys, not your coin" comes to mind. Well said. I do feel like the lost property argument would be challenging to win on (also not a lawyer). If you didn't have the key, it would be really difficult to prove an address was "yours"

I would advise you to first read this article to talk about regenerating any private key. This is only possible in theory. There are 2^256 private keys out there: how big is that number? https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=5147514 Or search for bitcoins on keys.lol, maybe you are a lucky person. https://https://keys.lol/bitcoin/904625697166532776746648320380374280100293470930272690489102837043110636675/bitcoin/904625697166532776746648320380374280100293470930272690489102837043110636675

According to the protocol, they do. If someone randomly selects the exact same private key with yours (which is immeasurably improbable to happen), then two people have custody of the coins, and either of them can spend them to themselves. No, there is no law that protects you from such scenario.

Even if they give 10,000 BTC, the bitcoin private key can't be cracked, atleast for now. We don't knwo about the future, but currently bitcoin is secure and there is no threat to bitcoin in terms of cracking the private keys. So if this thing is bothering you from investment in bitcoin, do not be afraid. If this happens and they tell the world that bitcoin private key is cracked, the bitcoin may dumped to zero and therefore the person getting the 1000 BTC wont be able to make any money. Secondly, having a private key means that you own that bitcoin and can spend the funds.

Thanks! I think that's kind of the beauty of the challenge really, even at 266, nobody has figured it out in years. I was just reading through the puzzle/challenge stuff, experimenting with some code, and naturally I tried hashing "password", which resulted in an address that did receive and send bitcoin. So, I started trying other random words, phrases, etc... I got a surprising amount of hits. I figure most of them are done comically, sarcastically, but I found it interesting, and wanted to see what the consensus was, or if there were any previous court rulings, or real world examples of this.

You try to act like hunters who have recently come to hunt and begin to divide the unkilled prey among themselves. Bitcoin is not primarily protected by legal laws that will not help ordinary citizens. Bitcoin is protected by mathematical laws that are fairer.

Fair. A kitten is still technically a hunter. I am sincerely just trying to learn. That, is rather lovely.