How are blockchain addresses pre-existent? I read the following statement somewhere on the web:
"Every blockchain address possible already existed, long before a wallet found it. The reason is that blockchain addresses are the result of a mathematical operation."
Can somebody explain this to me as they would to a child. I have no computer science background.
An address is an encoding of a 20 byte value. This value is just a number, from 0 to 2^160 (there are 8 bits in a byte, so a 20 byte value has 160 bits and a bit can be 2 values). Because we know what all of those numbers are, all possible addresses are known beforehand and already exist; they are just a number.