Can a BTC ‘seed phrase slot machine’ really make you rich?

The January blues got you looking for an easy win? Fancy gambling on bitcoin (BTC) risk-free? GitHub user Coinables’ webpage 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?

Most BTC users tend to 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, the type used in the slot machine, are often used. With 12 slots, and 2,048 words on the BIP39 list, there’s 2^128, or 3.4*10³⁸ combinations. A very big number.

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

Using data from Bitcoin data analytics platform Newhedge, Protos crunched the numbers to help you decide if it’s worth playing.

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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?

Read more: NBA Gambling Scandal: at least $400,000 in ETH seized

Crying (and dying) in the casino

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.”

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