Can a BTC 'Seed Phrase Slot Machine' Really Make You Rich?

Source: CryptoNewsNet Original Title: Can a BTC ‘seed phrase slot machine’ really make you rich? Original Link: The January blues got you looking for an easy win? Fancy gambling on bitcoin (BTC) risk-free? A GitHub-based tool called Mnemonic Slots lets you spin a seed-phrase slot machine, and checks if the resulting address holds any BTC. “Unlimited Free Spins = Unlimited Fun!” the site claims.

But is playing worth your time?

How Seed Phrases Work

Most BTC users use a seed phrase to store their private keys. A seed phrase offers many benefits: they’re human-readable, can plausibly be remembered, and avoid the risk of typos associated with raw private keys.

Twelve-word seed phrases are commonly used. With 12 slots and 2,048 words on the BIP39 list, there are 2^128, or 3.4×10^38 combinations—a very big number.

It would take a mind-boggling 378 trillion trillion years to match the odds of getting a hit.

But with unlimited free spins, how long would it take to make you a millionaire?

Jackpot or Crackpot?

There are around 57 million addresses which actually contain any BTC, though the vast majority of these (52.6 million) hold less than 0.01 BTC—less than $1,000 at current prices.

A further 3.4 million addresses hold between 0.01 and 1 BTC.

A total of over 144,000 addresses have over 10 BTC ($910,000), so there’s still plenty of chances to strike it lucky and become a BTC millionaire.

“Someone’s got to win, why not you?” the site asks. But how long would you need to play to be in with a chance?

The Math of Endless Spinning

With each spin taking two seconds, a (very) dedicated player could complete almost 16 million spins per year, playing non-stop, round the clock.

Even then, it would take a mind-boggling 378,316,182,084,146,000,000,000—or 378 trillion trillion years—to match the odds of getting a hit. That’s 27 trillion times longer than the universe has existed.

And that’s just for any wallet, most likely holding dust.

If aiming for one of the wallets with over 10 BTC, making a million would take almost 400 times longer still.

That said, it’s all probability. The next spin might luck out and hit it big.

Fancy your chances? Didn’t think so.

The project’s developer doesn’t think so either, with the readme stating simply: “there are no winners.”