user2751: Addresses are like GUIDs, no? They are created randomly whenever you request the creation of a new address.
But what if when creating one, it clashes with one already created? I know that the probability of this is staggeringly low, but there is a probability, it is not impossible.
What would happen in this case?

user1311: Coins sent to the shared address would appear in both wallets, but would then disappear from both of them when one of the persons spends them. As the network acknowledges and confirms that the coins have left that address, the wallet of the second person would be notified of this and decrease its value accordingly.
This would only affect coins sent to that specific address; the other coins in the two wallets would remain unrelated.

user3187: A bitcoin address is a 20-byte hash of a 64-byte public key (plus an ID and checksum to bring it up to 25 bytes).  As such, there are two theoretical possibilities with a clash:

Two separate people own public keys which hash to the same value
Two separate people own the same public key

Due to the way that Bitcoin transactions work, either of these situations would be enough for one party to spend the funds attached to the address.
So it's worth considering the likelihood of such a scenario.  Let's assume we have 7 billion people on the planet and they all use Bitcoin.  For there to be a 0.00000000001% chance of just two of the total in-use addresses clashing somewhere each person would need to have 4 trillion active addresses.
(Note that this is just calculating the chance of a hash collision; the chance of hitting the same keypair is so much more remote it's not worth bothering with).

2751: <p>Addresses are like GUIDs, no? They are created randomly whenever you request the creation of a new address.</p>

<p>But what if when creating one, it clashes with one already created? I know that the probability of this is <strong>staggeringly low</strong>, but there is a probability, it is not <strong>impossible</strong>.</p>

<p>What would happen in this case?</p>
 1311: <p>Coins sent to the shared address would appear in both wallets, but would then disappear from both of them when one of the persons spends them. As the network acknowledges and confirms that the coins have left that address, the wallet of the second person would be notified of this and decrease its value accordingly.</p>

<p>This would only affect coins sent to that specific address; the other coins in the two wallets would remain unrelated.</p>
 3187: <p>A bitcoin address is a 20-byte hash of a 64-byte public key (plus an ID and checksum to bring it up to 25 bytes).  As such, there are two theoretical possibilities with a clash:</p>

<ul>
<li>Two separate people own public keys which hash to the same value</li>
<li>Two separate people own the same public key</li>
</ul>

<p>Due to the way that Bitcoin transactions work, either of these situations would be enough for one party to spend the funds attached to the address.</p>

<p>So it's worth considering the likelihood of such a scenario.  Let's assume we have 7 billion people on the planet and they all use Bitcoin.  For there to be a 0.00000000001% chance of just two of the total in-use addresses clashing somewhere each person would need to have 4 trillion active addresses.</p>

<p>(Note that this is just calculating the chance of a hash collision; the chance of hitting the same keypair is so much more remote it's not worth bothering with).</p>
