[nadaviv]

"correct horse battery staple" is a reference to xkcd [0]. Its not meant to be "random" and not meant to be used by anyone. I assume that people who send funds to that address are fully aware that anyone can access them.

[0] http://xkcd.com/936/

[nwh]

I doubt it, they've sent almost 5BTC over 2300 transactions to that address so far. I personally know somebody who got caught out with it, and another with the static change address in the transaction view of the same site.

[3pt14159]

That is because when we explain brain wallets to people we use that phrase as an example and then show how quickly the coins are stolen.

[ChuckMcM]

It would be an interesting way to launder the block chain.

[LyndsySimon]

It's been done.

About a year ago, I generated the Bitcoin addresses derived from single-word passphrases in the English language. I then came across a "top 1000 passwords" list from a large site hack, and added those as well.

Finally, I set up a script that watched Blockchain.info's Websockets endpoint and checked every destination address against the list.

I quickly noticed that there were a large number of ~0.05 BTC transactions to these addresses, and a network analysis showed that many of them ended up in the same handful of addresses. Those addresses were tagged on Blockchain.info as being the destination for coins used to buy off the writer of the ransomware that was making the rounds at the time.

None of the money sat at those addresses for more than a couple of minutes. I'm fairly sure that the coins aren't being stolen from those addresses, but merely quickly run through in a feeble attempt to launder coins.

ETA: I suppose I should add that I didn't take any balances. I was merely satisfying my own curiosity.