A key directory, a wallet-generation stack, a funded-address scan, and a synthetic search benchmark. Start with Part 0 and follow the series in order.

Part 0 — Nobody Broke the Math

A hardware wallet can generate an unpredictable secret and still give it away. That distinction starts a series on Bitcoin keys, entropy, and failed randomness.

Part 1 — The Database of All Bitcoin Private Keys Is a Magic Trick

A private-key directory calculates its pages on demand. Building the trick shows why displaying a keyspace and searching it are different jobs.

Part 2 — Seed Phrases, Entropy, and the Myth of the Narrowed Search

Twelve words encode less entropy than twenty-four. Following BIP39 and BIP32 shows what that changes for guessing a seed, recovering a key, and backing up a wallet.

Part 3 — Where Bitcoin Keys Actually Die: A Scanner Experiment

Four candidate generators, a dated funded-address snapshot, and zero snapshot matches. The useful evidence is in exactly what the scanner tested.

Part 4 — When Randomness Fails

Real entropy failures have different causes. A 150-billion-probe synthetic run gives us a measurable search result, provided we keep its model attached to the numbers.

Scripts and results on GitHub · Completed benchmark