Is this the most value-dense information on Earth?

How about peptides? The targeting end of the anti-obesity drug described in [1] can be expressed as 7 characters (KGGRAKD) in a 20 character alphabet. Another agreement [2] values candidate peptides at $32.8M each, even without a specific therapeutic application. The same value could be applied to certain short linear motifs, which could be composed of as few as 3 amino acids. These strings don't suffer from the same liquidity problems that limit the real value of bitcoin addresses either (i.e. the value is really in the data).

[1] http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3666164/

[2] http://www.arrowheadresearch.com/press-releases/arrowhead-an...

Considering that anyone trying to sell that much bitcoin at once would pretty much crash the currency, how much is it really worth?

Perhaps some kind of revolutionary mathematical fact could be worth even more? This is a very interesting question.

EDIT: A lot of people responding to me seem to be trying to contradict my argument by pointing out that if it was true, it would be true for almost everything. I don't get how that works, because it is true of everything! Flooding the market will always reduce the value of what you are selling.

>Thus, each individual bit protects USD $631,212... USD $631,212 per bit

That seems a rather flawed way of viewing the density, since that key represents 2^256 possible combinations. So if you take a way a bit, the density by that measure goes up 0.3%. Practically speaking, it should double.

Why don't we instead calculate the density as the expected value of guessing one combination. In other words, let's say I have stolen an ATM card and can wipe a bank account containing $100,000 by guessing the 4 digit pin:

$100,000/(10^4) = $10/guess

Or in our case:

$161,590,330/(2^256) = $1.39e-69/guess

Not so impressive now.

I'm sure a root private key from Verisign or something could give that a good run for its money on a byte-for-byte basis, though it's harder to directly valuate.

As an alternative to this, what about ICBM/Nuclear Launch codes - they have the potential to destroy a lot of value (both natural, material and psychological)?

Or even a terrorist's planning information prior to an event?

Or even genetic code?

Depends how you define value... Arguably the knowledge that e=mc^2 is far more valuable, and contained within much less data.

At some point, someone's going to decide it'll be easier to try and crack that key than mine.

Bruce Schneier once equated the security of a 256 bit private key by comparing the energy needed to brute force all possible combinations of 256 bits to the amount of energy harnessed for one year by a Dyson Sphere built around the sun.

So maybe there's a correlation, in the sense of knowing the GPS coordinates of Fort Knox, and targeting it with an ICBM?

Chaitin's constant gets my vote for most valuable number. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chaitin's_constant

The value is not wholly contained in the bits of the private key, it's also dependent on other state (namely, the state of the wallet). Consider the value of those bits once the money has moved.

I'd argue no. It's definitely some kind of valuable and/or dense, but it's not that simple.

The value is purely held up by what value people ascribe to this information. This can change rapidly (and it does), so the precise measure of value isn't really known until you actually convert it.

If you actually try to convert in a short amount of time, it'll rapidly destroy its own value, because the market doesn't have the kind of depth to absorb a hundreds of millions of USD conversion, so the only way to satisfy that bitcoin volume would be a rapid drop in price, which would lower the amount of USD in order to satisfy it, or conversely, increase the purchase power of everybody on the market.

The true value of this stash is thus, in fact, some fraction of the current valuation of bitcoin. The larger the stash, the smaller the fraction becomes, because the larger the stash, the less able will you be to realize the value.

This is the reason the winkelvii are creating an ETF. They're sitting on 1% of the coins in existence. An attempt to realize profits would take an extremely long time without moving the market quite adversely. So they need to create a vehicle that allows them to massively increase the market depth.

There are financial holdings worth 100+ times that bitcoin wallet. Likely protected by a lot less than 100 times the security of a 256 bit key.

Apple's hedge fund, Braeburn Capital, likely qualifies. It's arguably the largest hedge fund in the world. Gain access to their network and you could wreak serious financial havoc.