# Gavin Andresen
# 2010-12-12 21:36:58
# https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=2211.msg29525#msg29525

@p{(link}This thread@p{link)} talks in detail about Bitcoin's use of hashing of ECDSA public keys to generate bitcoin addresses. @p{par}

Executive summary: @p{brk}
  bitcoinaddress = RIPEMD-160(SHA-256(publickey)) @p{par}

So you'd need to break both RIPEMD-160 and SHA-256 hashing algorithms.  And the RIPEMD break would have to be quite extreme@p{--} more than just "add some random data to force a hash collision" (which is how MD5 is broken), because it is hashing a SHA-256 hash, so you're not able to add some random data to be hashed. @p{par}