user105535: I was actually wondering...
How long would it take to crack/brute force a 32 bit key/encryption and a 16 bit key/encryptions respectively?

user100690: Way too fast.
It's only 4,294,967,296 combinations for 32 bit and 65,536 for a 16 bit. I assume it can be cracked in seconds/minutes by a high-grade consumer laptop.
The resources required for a brute-force attack grow exponentially with increasing key size, not linearly.
I would also suggest reading the article about breaking mnemonic seed where author had to calculate SHA-256, SHA-512, RIPEMD-160, EC Addition, EC Multiplication in every iteration and he was able to check ~143,000 mnemonics per second.

105535: <p>I was actually wondering...
How long would it take to crack/brute force a 32 bit key/encryption and a 16 bit key/encryptions respectively?</p>
 100690: <p>Way too fast.
It's only 4,294,967,296 combinations for 32 bit and 65,536 for a 16 bit. I assume it can be cracked in seconds/minutes by a high-grade consumer laptop.</p>
<p><a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brute-force_attack" rel="nofollow noreferrer">The resources required for a brute-force attack grow exponentially with increasing key size, not linearly.</a></p>
<p>I would also suggest reading the <a href="https://medium.com/@johncantrell97/how-i-checked-over-1-trillion-mnemonics-in-30-hours-to-win-a-bitcoin-635fe051a752" rel="nofollow noreferrer">article</a> about breaking mnemonic seed where author had to calculate S<code>HA-256, SHA-512, RIPEMD-160, EC Addition, EC Multiplication</code> in every iteration and he was able to check ~143,000 mnemonics per second.</p>
