[hashcash] Re: Statistics of hashcash collisions

>>>>> "Anonymous" == Anonymous  <cripto@xxxxxxx> writes:

[...]

Anonymous> The time for hashcash collisions of a substantial number of
Anonymous> bits, 10 or more, can be represented by a Poisson
Anonymous> distribution.

I think you are mixing up your distributions.  The *time* taken to find
a collision follows a geometric distribution, which is a discrete
distribution, and is approximated by the exponential distribution,
which is a continuous distribution.

The number of hashcash collisions that we will find after N trials
follows a binomial distribution, which is approximated (for large N) by
a Poisson distribution.

so:
time to mint a single token ~ exponential distribution
number of tokens minted after a fixed time ~ Poisson distribution

Your analysis seems to be correct, though.  But it could be rendered
simpler by using the right distribution (and your introductory sentence
could benefit from the precision).

-- 
Hubert Chan <hubert@xxxxxxxxx> - http://www.uhoreg.ca/
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