What if there are 2 equal bitcoin addresses (I know it's incredibly unlikely, but I'm curious to know)

What if there are 2 equal bitcoin addresses (from different wallets) (I know it’s incredibly unlikely, but I’m curious to know, so just guess that) and someone send money to one (or both?) of those?..both will recieve half? both will recieve the full money?..the universe would collapse?

Sorry if it is a silly question, i’m newbie

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There are people that literally spend all day every day running a computer script to create wallet addresses with the hopes of matching with other existing wallets.

If you generate a public address that is the same as an existing one, it’d be the equivalent of someone walking into your house with a copy of your key. Basically, every public address has a private key associated to the address.

Both individuals would have access to the funds within that wallet.

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Generating the same private key, or generating a different private key that generates the same public key is very unlikely. Sending money to is will give it the amount you sent, there is no dividing. Its a normal public address like any else, but it may be controlled by multiple users if they both have the key.

Apparently, there can also be two private keys connected to the same address.

Link: Two Private Keys, Same Address

"Yes, you can have two keys generate the same address .

There are 2^160 possible addresses, and 2^256 possible private keys, so each address corresponds to roughly 2^(256-160)=2^96 private keys. Any of these will generate the same address and thus be able to spend the money owned by that address"

Here is a funny website to check out: https://keys.lol/

Good luck! :wink:

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Thanks for the answer! that helped a lot, and also thanks for the link