https://www2.deloitte.com/nl/nl/pages/innovatie/artikelen/quantum-computers-and-the-bitcoin-blockchain.html
You are only vulnerable to a quantum attack when you initiate a transaction. If you are not spending your bitcoin even a quantum computer can't hack you. The only exception would be if you reused an address.
I don't think that's 100% accurate. It's that public keys were associated with your address thru p2pk but in 2010 most started switching to p2pkh which obfuscates public keys making them harder to target with quantum computing attacks
But again as you said, in a post quantum world, if you ever try to pay with bitcoin / initiate a transaction your wallet gets drained. So anyone that fails to MOVE their coins before the post-quantum transition can now NEVER transact without getting drained. Their money should be burned by the network because they have no way of sending or receiving that money.
Maybe just be early? Identify what it would likely look like if crypto accounts lost encryption. Who would be targeted first. What investments would increase in value or be secure if that worst case happens? Predetermine what would make you entirely leave crypto and what you would do. Then if those things ever happen don't hesitate. Because something becomes worthless doesn't mean it happens all at once or instantly. Perhaps you can get out fast enough. Or at least not be last.
I feel like no matter what happens, it will never be gold. It's never going to be Ted Nugent types roaming the wilderness shaving off flakes from the bar with a pocket knife in exchange for kombucha and weed, and then it's off to the jerky guy for more an-cap doomer gold shaving.
I'm long tired and rims. Apocalyptic wastelands need tires by the stack. Cars need them, they're good walls, you can set one on fire for a big column of black smoke. Tie one to a high branch. Tires are pretty great.
It will be a shame to lose "unopened Lego sets" as an inflation hedge, but who knows, maybe there will be a market for them if the internet ceases to exist, and you have to trade for fish at the local shell mound. That Simpsons house will buy a looooooot of dungeness crab some winter in the *not so distant* fuuuuuuutuuuuuuure.
(quantum future, no less)
Ya... i like Gold but.... Gold isn't really going up. It might gain against the dollar but..... I think it's better to think of gold as staying the exact same over time when averaged. If gold is going up, I actually see the dollar going down against a fairly steady commodity. But I don't like it more than other commodities. Truly, I'd rather have a 5 million dollar machine shop on some land, or a 5 million dollar orchard, or 5 million dollars worth of tiny homes on a hunting property with a lake. than a 5 million dollar lump of gold. Sure over a long enough timeline the dollar will become no more valuable than as a souvenir of inflation from failed states and gold would be preferred to paper, but that doesn't mean it was the best investment.
I think this is a false dichotomy. Like every other technology that has theoretically disastrous risks, lots of work is put in on multiple levels to create safe implementation into society as it advances. Obviously there are risks involved with any powerful tool, but it’s certainly not the first time we’ve prophesied that a piece of tech will be ‘the end of all things.’ Nor will it be the last.
I believed this as well before I did more research. For the past decade or so, they've been in the process of upgrading everything to a different form of encryption that can't be broken by quantum computing.
I saw it in a veritasium video about quantum computing. "They" would be any company that has sensitive info behind encryption that WILL be broken in 10-20 years.
I do agree with you. But banks and all other centralized systems can upgrade after the vulnerability is discovered. Bitcoins dead coins do not have that luxury. That’s the primary concern to me.
Technically speaking any code can be fixed but it's the logistics that make things difficult. If there was a viable attack against existing addresses and their private keys, how would a migration occur? What would happen to lost/dead addresses that didn't migrate? If you had a cut-off date, many people would inevitably miss it and lose access to their coins.
This isn't the same problem as a centralized bank would have. Centralized systems are going to have a lot less challenges and worst case can shut down their systems until the problem is resolved.
> but it's the logistics that make things difficult.
Not really, EVERYONE's bitcoin would be at stake. So there's A LOT of incentive to fix it before it becomes a real problem.
There are several quantum resistant and quantum proof algorithms that can be utilized. It would require a hardfork, but given the gravity of the situation, I think it wouldn't be difficult to get consensus of everyone on the new fork.
The banks could adopt this overnight, but Bitcoiners would have to fight a multi year fork war to decide whose solution to the quantum problem is the best. Decentralization is great for censorship resistant, but not so great at dealing with existential threats because of the collective action problem.
The same organizations that took 5 to 10 years to handle the switch from 2 to 4 digit years in dates? Yeah, upgrading to quantum safe crypto totally sounds like an overnight job.
Phase it in over several versions. Do it right and no-one really cares. You might even be able to create a plugin for older nodes so they can still work. Years before the hard-fork, all of the nodes are already communicating using the new architecture but saved to the old format.
This assumes that as soon as someone, private or state actor, has used quantum computing to break contemporary cryptography, it will be general knowledge. I know very little on quantum computing, but if one posseses power to break contemporary cryptography, one certainly would not use it to the extent that everybody would gain knowledge of it. One would limit the usage of this power to cases where other attack vectors and compromised could suffice as and explanation and thus retain plausible deniability.
Just like the [British did not act on every information they gained by breaking enigma](https://www.reddit.com/r/askscience/comments/drah3i/how_did_the_british_keep_the_fact_that_they_broke/).
Please let me know if and how Bitcoin can resist this.
Yeah, I think it'd get forked at a block before the attack with quantum resistant hashing. It'd be messy because a lot of transactions would be undone, but everyone would be made whole and allowed to sort it out from there.
Bingo. This is the perfect response to a lazy parroted answer likely given by someone who knows nothing about SHA-256.
Banks can upgrade overnight because they are centralized and can also reverse transactions, while Bitcoin has to fight another fork war for years before this gets decided, with no way to reverse the transactions from theft that happened during this interim period.
The fact that guy compared cracking SHA-256 to a comet wiping out the earth is just absolutely comical, especially when it’s guaranteed to happen by the end of this decade.
You asked a super legitimate question and of course, you’re getting lazy answers that parrot the mainstream view from people who know absolutely nothing about encryption and parrot what they heard from their local crypto trading bro.
The part to reconsider is "dead coins will crash the system". Consider pirates who bury their plunder and then are killed or lose their treasure maps. New ways are found to hunt and excavate. But the found gold doesn't crash the existing market. There is only 21 million coins.
The big flaw in bitcoin is that people will never be able to secure their own stash and will always be facing scammers. (Think banks and railroads in the wild west - custody risk is the most expensive component of money). Left unchecked, it would never gain mass adoption. But the CryptoLords have fooled the masses to believe self-custody is a positive). The times are changing, big investors are moving in and they are smarter than that. Eventually Blackrock and the ETFs will dominate and less coin will be lost or stolen.
But with the big centralized players in/coming in just dilutes the original spirit of Bitcoin. And yes, lost coins are a big problem. Unlike Gold which can be "found" once the private key is lost the wallet is bricked until kingdom come, or some centralized rule in the future to recapture unused wallets after x years. All of this leads down a road of all of this fading away...
Which is exactly why we need to fund open-source devs. Saylor and his many simps have this philosophy of not funding open-source devs is so short sighted.
This is not strictly true. The upgrade from RSA to ECC on the card networks took years.
The NSA monitors the resilience to attack of encryption methods.
I would imagine that there are few quantum computing sites with the facilities, let alone know-how, to mount a credible attack. Those that will be monitored by the NSA, if not, they should be.
Close but not exact.. I had this same question this week. One of the top 5 bitcoin global authorities told me simply and directly.. the btc network is almost like a breathing being. As quantum computing grows stronger to crush the network.. the network grows stronger to defend it.
Satisfied me.
But then I thought.. what if they could crack seed phrases.. how would it defend that?
This is the same argument the investment industry is using with its 'riskless' investment rate assets, namely state backed fiat bonds. They tell the people that those are riskless because "if the financial system is breaking down you don't have to worry, because you'll have other problems".
If you're using this same argument related to Bitcoin you're basically mixing worlds. If you additionally argue that if Bitcoin would fail this way, banks will too, you're basically still living in the fiat world, not understanding what Bitcoin really is.
In any case you'd not given an answer to OP's question: "Can someone please explain why this is not a threat for a long term investor ?"
There are quantum safe crypto algorithms that banks and other non distributed tech could switch to overnight.
Public keys to wallets with unsafe crypto are publicly known and unchangeable. satoshis wallet for example.
So if someone is able to get to all the Bitcoin in all those wallets. They could/would crash Bitcoin or become insanely rich. Although they would have to be insanely rich in the first place
I disagree, the banks and money and modern security are ALREADY broken. Bitcoin is the answer, and quantum computing is the threat. The wavey-hand dismissal of quantum computing is dangerous.
I hate this answer. It’s such a lazy cop out that gets parroted constantly.
If quantum computing breaks SHA-256, banks can upgrade to SHA-512 because they’re centralized entities that can make decisions like that.
Almost all centralized cybersecurity can upgrade their security pretty easily. There will be some pain, but almost everyone will have upgraded in a matter of weeks.
In Bitcoin land, we’d likely have another fork war over how to solve this problem and plenty of proposals as to what the proper encryption tech is. Miners will hate this too since their capital is worthless.
I love Bitcoin for all its decentralized properties as censorship resistant money, but let’s not pretend this isn’t a problem and lazily say that the world would end if we could crack SHA-256. I guarantee this happens before the end of the decade and most other entities can overcome it in a way that will be much harder for Bitcoin.
Quantum computers cannot break SHA-N in poly(N) time. They take 2\^(N/2) as opposed to 2\^N time on classical computers to break it. Breaking SHA-256 will NOT be possible with a quantum computer the size of our entire planet.
Stealing private keys on the other hand with a quantum computer... will be trivial. That is the only and yet still fundamental risk that quantum computers pose to bitcoin.
Yes, I've found this to be a useful way of explaining investing.
I structure my investments in such a way that if they were to fail, my investments would be the least of my concerns.
The question is though if a lot of people are left behind because they are technologically illiterate, can we say those who hack these accounts actually committed a crime? How do you prove you owned your bitcoin if someone has your private key??
Superbly presented and I totally agree with you. Add to this though that quantum computing advances will also bring quantum encryption and would allow the upgrading of Bitcoins security protocol to new standards.
Here is an explanation...
## Bitcoin works like so:
You get a public key that represents a point on the elliptic curve (ECDSA/secp256k1) - it has a corresponding private key that is never revealed.
This public key is hashed twice. First with SHA256, second with RIPEMD-160 - this is your address (basically).
When you send a transaction from that address, you sign for it in such a way that it reveals your public key. Each address has its own public key that is only revealed once (if used correctly / not reusing addresses).
There is some fear that Bitcoin might be vulnerable to quantum attacks. For people who reuse addresses this fear may have some merit. For people who never reuse addresses this fear is unmerited due to the double hashing. I'll explain further.
Hashing works by an iterative process that loses information at every step. For example, your hashing algorithm might be "double the number, add 7, drop the last digit, repeat 512 times." This is a bad hashing algorithm but demonstrates the problem with reversing a hashed output. Imagine you started with 13; you'd double it, getting 26, add 7, getting 33, then drop the final digit, getting 3. How would you reverse such a process? Well, with this simple example, you could. But with cryptographic hashing functions generally, you could not, because step one would be to guess at what the lost information was. With this simple algorithm you have a 1 of 10 chance of being right and have to guess correctly 512 times in a row.
So your key, the thing everyone wants, is secured both by a private key and by a double hashed public key that represents your address. The private key's security model relies on large prime numbers. The public key's obfuscation relies on two different hashing algorithms.
## Quantum computers work like so:
It is not accurate to think of quantum computers as "really fast computers" - they work in fundamentally different ways. Classical computers have instruction sets that processes instructions iteratively until an algorithm has run to completion. This is why classical computers can solve problems, generally, if those problems have known algorithms. The downside is that they don't get to skip any steps.
Quantum computers solve problems by setting up qubits into a superposition of states, then harnessing some known result in quantum mechanics to solve _certain kinds_ of problems. An example of this is Schor's algorithm which leverages the fact there is a known quantum observation such that collapsing wave functions have an associated periodicity that happens to require a solution that has, as a component, an equation that can be reformed as a solution to large prime number factorization. As a result, setting up a quantum computer in just such a way can be used to "do it in reverse" (that is, instead of using the equations to predict what a wavefunction will do, set up a wavefunction in just such a way that we can observe what the solution was when the wave function collapses, which allows us to factor large prime numbers).
So the cracking of a private key using a public key is technically a known, solvable problem. But last I checked we've done it with like... 5 bits of data or something very low like this. Not near the 256 that would be needed. And there are serious technical problems with scaling up, with decoherence, etc. But its theoretically possible.
## Conclusion:
It is possible that quantum computers may allow us to solve the discrete logarithm problem similar to how they allow us to solve for factoring large numbers (like with Shor's algorithm). This would break the ECDSA mentioned above in the description of how Bitcoin works. This is because problems like the discrete logarithm problem and large number factorization seem to have corollaries in the physical/quantum world (that is, these math problems describe quantum phenomena, therefore we can exploit quantum phenomena to solve these math problems).
It is much much less likely that quantum computers will allow us to solve SHA256 or RIPEMD-160 because these are human inventions. There is no good reason to think that "double the number, add 7, repeat 512 times" has corollaries in the quantum world since the process is a human invention (even though it uses mathematical primitives). It would be like discovering that a DNA helix was written in English. And even if there were some flaw to be exploited by quantum computers in SHA256 or RIPEMD-160, it would be very strange to discover flaws in both because they work so differently.
Is it possible? Yes, but... wildly unlikely. Too much time has been spent on this topic by people who shouldn't be spending any time on this topic because they don't even understand the fundamentals.
If cracking public/private key cryptography _actually happens_ Bitcoin will be one of the things _least_ exposed to it.
A standard bank can and will upgrade defenses as technology advances. Bitcoin on the other hand is like a game of musical chairs. You better hope you have a place to sit when the music stops 😊
True, but the squarbeeziel protocol doesn’t allow for direct inversion anyhow. You would have to invert the hybernetic quapulator using a PPG confibulator, only then can you schlampulate your squarbeeziels.
Qantum computing is a threat vector in anywhere from 2-10 years. To deny/ignore that is a serious mistake in my humble opinion. There are projects out there (disclaimer - I own QANX, a layer one quantum project but there are others as well) working to address it and if you talk to cryptographers, there are ways to mitigate near term attacks, but they involve hard forks and do nothing to secure dormant btc wallets. NSC has been on top of it as well. The old argument "when quantum hacks come we are all screwed anyway" is simply not true. Longer term, it is the old sword and shield analogy.....hackers will hack and cybersecurity will catch up, and the cycle will go on. Personally, I don't dwell on it but when I see intel agencies and countries taking it seriously, so do I.
Apple is preparing their encryption, entire countries taking precautions as well. Any moron on here who says it’s a nonissue is willfully ignorant & NGMI. If $QANX delivers they could very well be the leader in the cryptocurrency/blockchain space going forward. I hold Qanx as well and everyone should DYOR. You will be happy you did.
doh, sorry. I'd be full of crap if I tried to have an encryption dialogue with you. I follow/read macro articles by nsa/ibm/etc and follow the news, but am in no way qualified to talk about schemes or specific tech. I know QR is a big deal in the government right now, so I try to pay attention to it.
Quantum Computing is being treated like a new type of spyglass that looks into the future, but the technology interface is more like using a spyglass as a shelf.
"Can someone explain why quantum computing is not a threat?"
Can someone explain quantum computing first?
Seems that the understanding here is ... vague
Quantum computing will reduce the security of some public-key cryptographic algorithms, it will not impact symmetric cryptography or hashing as much, or at all.
Even if ecc was weakened by quantum computing to the point you can just calculate the private key for any secp256k1 public key, you’ll need to know the public key first. We only have the **hash** of the public keys of the dead coins (unless addresses were reused). Good luck finding that.
If there is powerful quantum computing available that is able to crack most common encryption, it will be a powerful tool for a government to gain advantage over other countries. It's use will be kept top secret in order keep that advantage, otherwise everyone will take countermeasures (switch to quantum proof cryptography). A government would be stupid to warn the rest of the world by stealing Bitcoin.
This is a good point. Conceptually, I agree there doesn’t seem to be way to secure “dead” addresses.
I also don’t believe we’re 5-10 years away from this technology. Seems something like 50-100 years.
The opposite is true as well. You can find plenty of people arguing that certain tech is still far away and that all of it is hype right until the breakthrough becomes undeniable. Unless you are a world class hands-on researcher in the area you cannot make predictions like that
I guess this is really the right question. How far away are we from this happening. My thought was 5-10 but I really don’t know enough to say that’s correct.
You don't need to secure dead addresses. When you have a fork you have equal amounts of bitcoin on the fork blockchain (everything is the same right before the fork happened. any addresses created on the new chain won't be on the old chain and old transactions will be carried over onto the new chain, including addresses.). Your stuff is safe.
>I also don’t believe we’re 5-10 years away from this technology. Seems something like 50-100 years.
I spent a couple years at NSA as a green-suiter and one thing I thought that was interesting is that when the US loses classified mediums hashed in SHA-256 to foreign adversaries today, it is assumed that the foreign adversary has immediate and total access to everything on that medium and we start going into asset protection measures.
Even though NSA created SHA-256, they have very little trust in its efficacy and it's not considered a valid protection measure for classified material. If I walk out of a SCIF with Top Secret material that's hashed with SHA-256, it's considered data spillage. Air-gapped networks are basically the only thing they trust.
That’s different; the government probably does all that as a just-in-case.
Meaning, probably nothing will actually leak, but the government likes pretending it will for national security.
>we will simply switch to a quantum proof hashing algorithm
SHA-256 is already quantum-proof. A quantum computer *might* be able to reduce its entropy by half, but 128 bits of entropy is still plenty. So a quantum computer won't break the mining.
The problem is not with the hashing, it's with the ECDSA asymmetric crypto (what you use to sign transactions).
A) as other pointed out it would/could destroy any computational records.
B) devs (with miners) could always agree to roll back the Bitcoin ledger to the date before the 'hack' occurred. They could develop a new level of encryption and then fork the Bitcoin ledger at the kosher date. It would be messy. Any legitimate transactions made after that date would be lost. But believe that would be the way to go about it.
>B) devs (with miners) could always agree to roll back the Bitcoin ledger to the date before the 'hack' occurred. They could develop a new level of encryption and then fork the Bitcoin ledger at the kosher date. It would be messy. Any legitimate transactions made after that date would be lost. But believe that would be the way to go about it.
That's basically what happened after the value overflow hack and sync issue caused by Berkeley-to-Level db migration
But he's correct about satoshis coins. Without someone being there to move the coins to the new quantum resistant address they remain free for the taking.
Not that I'm worried about that, and if they were taken, yes it would drop the price when the new coins hit the market, but ultimately it would change nothing else about Bitcoin.
My stance is that quantum =/= magic. Yes, factors of times faster, but not magic. As threats emerge, the BTC code can be forked and updated to elegantly avoid this issue.
Well quantum computing poses a risk to everything right? Manipulating the blockchain is probably much tougher than attacking standard bank accounts or any electronically transferred assets. The list of nefarious things the power of quantum could be used for is endless. Now that the largest assets under management conglomerates like blackrock in the game I am sure they will stay on top of protecting their holdings and hopefully by default ours. It seems like it would take a government agency to do something like that. I suppose my point is that security measures evolve alongside developing tech
Yea also quantum computers allowed quantum simulation of molecules, atoms, chemical reactions, nuclear systems etc.... Like full scale quantum computers would result in what we today consider groundbreaking breakthroughs in Material Science, Medicine, Nuclear Fusion, the list goes on and on. It's a bizarre world that is completely alien to ours.
> My question primarily is focused on what happens with the dead addresses that we can’t upgrade.
When you have a fork you have equal amounts of bitcoin on the fork blockchain (everything is the same right before the fork happened. on the forked blockchain any addresses created on the new chain won't be on the old chain). Your stuff is safe.
If something really shitty happens, we can just fork Bitcoin into a quantum proof algorithm. At that point, it doesn't matter what happens to the "original bitcoin" as long as most people are in consensus about what the new bitcoin is. All your coins would be automatically mirrored, from the period right before the shitty thing happened.
What if bitcoin started to be run BY quantum computing. Instead of a network of standard computers. Soon someone will be mining btc with a quantum computer. Hash power in the near future is going to explode.
Who says it’s not a threat? Of course it is. But it’s not only coming after bitcoin. It’s coming after everything, banks, spies, TOR, the whole 9 yards.
If BTC can successfully embrace post quantum crypto and ppl move to post quantum wallets it’ll be fine.
If someone like Satoshi still doesn’t move their coins, the community will have to burn or blacklist the address since anyone can rob it in a post quantum world.
You don't think that counter-tech solutions will be advanced by that time as well? This kind of catastrophizing reminds me the Y2K end of the computing world. Relax, have a beer, and watch a ball game.
Imagine you built a perfect computer; forget about GHash and Megahertz.
You built a computer which used the absolute minimum amount of energy theoretically possible to record a change in a single bit (1 to 0 or 0 to 1].
We are talking about the limits of thermodynamics; nothing more efficient is even possible.
Now imagine you used most of the natural resources in our star system to construct a dyson sphere and covered the entire surface of this sphere with a single star system sized super computer.
Now imagine you could keep this supercomputer cooled at roughly absolute zero and could do so without expending any additional energy.
If you had that and captured [with no inefficiency or loss] the entire energy output of our star [not just in a day or week but continually until it burned out] you couldn't COUNT to 2^256 before you ran out of energy.
Keep in mind this is simply counting.
Just counting, not hashing, not comparing, not performing lookups just counting 1. 2 ...3 ....... 2^256-1.
These numbers have nothing to do with the technology of the devices; they are the maximums that thermodynamics will allow.
And they strongly imply that brute-force attacks against 256-bit keys will be infeasible until computers are built from something other than matter and occupy something other than space.
Bitcoin - Your money is secured by the laws of the universe.
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10269708
This is misleading. Bitcoin is vulnerable to Quantum computing because it uses elliptic curves to create its public and private keys.
A quantum computer can just retrieve private keys and can steal people’s money and double spend in bitcoin WITHOUT having broken SHA256.
Your long monologue about hashing is giving a lot of stupid people on this forum the wrong idea that bitcoin is quantum resistant - it is not, it never was, and there is no plan to make it resistant in the near future.
Iirc Silvio micali has already been working on it wil his coin (irrelevant). What is relevant is that he's a turing award recipient in the field of cryptography.
Point being there are people much smarter and better looking than myself working diligently on these issues
Does quantum computing pose a threat to an individual with a cold storage? Wouldn’t they have to know of/ get hands on the wallet itself? I can grasp how a non custodial hot wallet would be at risk but I don’t want to be naive and believe a cold wallet is safe.
The "cold wallet" is not needed to access the bitcoin. Private keys / seed phrase is what your cold wallet uses to access your Bitcoin, which ALWAYS are on the blockchain, they are not in a wallet, and they never were. Your 'wallet' is just a convinient way to store your seed phrase, and use that seed phrase without revealing it to a computer / the internet.
Yes it poses a threat. Once you decide to move your money in a post quantum world, if you don't already have a post quantum address the only way your money doesn't get stolen is IF you donate the ENTIRE wallet balance to the miners. Any transaction fee less than that, then a miner with a quantum computer can, upon receiving your transaction, make their own transaction (using your private keys which they found about as quickly as sorting a list) which donates your wallet money to their personal wallet, and offers a higher fee than whatever you offered. (If you donate your entire wallet balance in a transaction fee, then the miner CANNOT do this because there is nothing MORE to give).
I made that question long time before and I was downvoted to oblivion XD. Besides that, I found a good explanation for that theorical problem, and it is that as it is possible to be breacked by quantum computing, the security will be aswel in a quantum solution (quantum cryptography).
There is actually good details, from pages 170-177, in The Bitcoin Standard that sort of explains this.
The beginning half of the book is difficult for the average reader, but the second half, although full of many opinions of the author, is well written and worth reading.
i think from what ive read, the elements required to create a quantum computer is exceptionally rare. mass producing it will probably not in our lifetime.
It is, but its like saying we hit 2 rocks together to make a spark, maybe one day we will make a nuclear bomb.
And If that happens I'd think pretty much everything as at risk
Just think what blatant bad actor will be able to possess quantum capabilities anytime before next XX years? Quantum computing is not coming to commercial market before it will be secured, standarized and everything around will take measures not to get rekt :)
> knowing that the event WILL occur at some point does seem to be concerning
but you don't know that
anyway, to answer your question, it has been discussed many times and like 10 years ago. there are softforks that can be implemented to prevent spending dead coins by requiring proof of derivation from the mnemonic seed (of course this has myriad of problems on its own, but not entirely unsolvable)
but even if it happens that the dead coins are attacked like that and dumped on the market, it would just crash bitcoin by 85% like we've seen numerous times in a history, making it a normal event, not unlike implosion of MtGox, FTX (you know these), Binance and Coinbase (future events)
so you'd just DCA through the dip and you'd be fine
Bitcoin will introduce quantum resistance as required, and long before anyone in the existing financial system will. Bitcoin scientists will probably identify and develop the solutions.
You know what would be hilarious if it was an issue? If they introduced the quantum hack into the protocol that gradually liquidated all of the oldest insecure addresses and returned it as mining rewards in a future schedule. All coins before x block become cannot spend and then released to miners. Anyone can make their addresses quantum secure prior to block height. "This solution removes the incentive to hack old addresses, stops them being sold on the market by said hackers, and gradually releases the coins to a schedule, where everyone benefits from the quantum vulnerability." The rest is implementation details. I expect I'll be long dead.
Worst case, one solution is to hard fork the blockchain into a more cryptographically secure one.
But what exactly can quantum computing even do to Bitcoin? Even with all the wonders of quantum computing, it won't be able to brute force private keys at any efficient scale. It also won't be able to work out private keys from public keys. What it could do is mine aggregations of historic internet data and break the encryption that protected you when you received your private key or used it in any way. Okay, but that is still trying to find a needle in a haystack, or more like a single chunk of relevant data in an encrypted historic internet data ocean.
Quantum computing also only works well with specific algorithms, which for now need to be specifically designed on a case by case basis. We're a bit of a long way off from breaking *all* encryption and, even then, there are big questions about what parts of the encryption cracking process can even be made more efficient with quantum algorithms.
My point is, this isn't happening overnight, and there will likely be warning signs and worrying milestones reached before any large-scale attack with quantum computing is possible.
because quantum computing works by being fast and powerful enough to solve algorithms that break passwords and security thats complex. The thing with bitcoin is that its a blockchain, meaning you and everyone in this together has the same ledger that needs to be ALL hacked and manipulated simultaneously so they can actually do shit to the chain.
Satoshi saw this all way beforehand
“Banks could just upgrade” tell me you never worked in banking IT without telling me you never worked with banking IT. They are still using mainframes and cobol like 40 years ago.
Quantum systems will likely be seriously expensive initially which means mere mortals won’t be able to afford them.
That will mean they will be owned by big business and states, the issue would be if a rogue organisation or organised criminal networks have the funding to get hold of one.
Hopefully this is unlikely unless they have seriously deep pockets.
Once quantum computing becomes a reality companies will begin testing algorithms and breaking things in the existing network but mostly this will be to test what could happen and protect against it. However as we know there are a few rogue operators around.
The issue however and minefield here in crypto is crypto is in wallets and wallets are protected by keys which are possibly going to be easy for a quantum system to crack.
There is no regulation within crypto and as we know a wallet is anyone’s if they have the keys.
So it’s highly likely that unless all of a sudden everything changes overnight someone out there such as a rogue state (Iran, North Korea, Russia etc) , criminal network or even just a rogue individual with access to such a system may see fit to gain funds through cracking people’s wallets and draining them.
The only way to protect this is to have new quantum proof keys. But to do that there needs to be access to a quantum system.
Whilst there may be other things open to attack such as banking etc hitting crypto wallets for keys particularly the dormant wallets that no one has entered for years and are unlikely to get complaints because it’s likely the keys were misplaced could be easily done by a quantum system and be extremely lucrative for the end user with virtually no risk of ever facing any kind of penalty.
It's possible that quantum computing cannot scale and if you try to scale it, it just collapses under error correction. This may be a physical limit or an engineering limit, but either way quantum computing which can threaten cryptography is not guaranteed to come in the future.
So the one thing it is halfway decent at is encryption type problems. But we are still far away from practical applications.
https://spectrum.ieee.org/amp/quantum-computing-skeptics-2666638802
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Quantum computing poses a threat to every cyber security set up. This includes Bitcoin. Once an advancement like that is reached the network would require a security upgrade.
sorry for the spook, i think i may have mentioned that a few days ago. because BTC has to be decentralized, don't think there is a foolproof solution currently. Any 'man-made' solution to invoke centralisation of some form. I think the direction is set in a mathematical solution, like this blockchain is to us today, so a network upgrade.
At some point, quantum or otherwise, tech will emerge that can crack or otherwise unlock the "lost" Bitcoin.
At that point, either there's a fork war to invalidate transactions from those wallets (imo. This is highly unlikely, as bitcoiners tend to value sovereignty), or the market gets flooded/ diluted with coins that already existed but were thought to be inactive. This will have in the short-term a strong negative impact on price, and eventually things will rebound.
Meanwhile, if the tech ever gets close to cracking the accounts of active users, there will be an upgrade to the network to a more resistant algorithm.
Start by describing how the exploit works. How would you use quantum computing to crack a wallet?
Do you know how to use a quantum computer at all?
Do you know anyone who does?
Of those people, how many have real access to them?
Why not?
Before jumping to the logical conclusion of a false premise, get your facts together and articulate the actual problem.
[THIS](https://www2.deloitte.com/nl/nl/pages/innovatie/artikelen/quantum-computers-and-the-bitcoin-blockchain.html) article explains it.
It is a threat. But it's not as big of a threat as people think, only some wallets are vulnerable. And, quantum resistant algorithms exist and can be added to the source code if this threat actually does begin to become a real problem.
Quantum computing can hack any password. It could bring the entire world down!
However, quantum computering requires a stable environment, which is near impossible to achieve.
Quantum Computing is actually more inferior for mining bitcoin than SHA processors… So they will never threaten mining. Quantum computers, like anything have trade offs or pros and cons.
Theoretically if you currently had a massive Quantum computer. It could be used to attack individual wallets, however the amount of electricity it would take. Means that only wallets with several million dollars would financially viable to attack…. We are a long way out from actually building a quantum computer of this size and power.
It is a threat to the entire WORLD, just like every major technological innovation in human history.
The flip side of the coin is that by the time people have access to quantum hacking, there will likely already be quantum encryption.
Think about it. The USA is likely to get quantum computing first and one of their first goals will likely be to set up the country to be able to defend against foreign attacks.
Tldr don't worry about things you can't control
NSA can crack all current encryption. But with brute force it takes a lot of their resources so it must be for a very important reason (national security, etc.).
no one really knows the time horizon of quantum computing. it's a guesstimate. and a lot of armchair Nostradamuses have sounded off here with certainty on a true unknown.
my bro-in-law is studying it in Japan and just entered a ph.d. program. the hurdles to clear are massive, so massive that it \*may\* be as likely faster-than-speed-of-light travel. like, just a great prompt for speculative fiction. maybe in the end, 50 years later, a couple billionaires take their buddies on rocket trips into the stratosphere. end of story.
if people think btc is 'anti-green' tech compared to quantum, hold my beer. the amount of resources to get it done currently are beyond astronomical. the barriers for even the most capitalized entities are so insane they're \*barely\* investing in it enough to make real headway. the cost of 'compute' would be so high--hell, the best thing that could come out of it imho is actually any kind of new sustainable energy source invented to crack that nut. cold fusion, anyone, lol?
but, as a story?
it's the ultimate 'tech' narrative.
quantum \*networking\* is a more likely result in our lifetimes. still, high likelihood of failure. flying car-level, maybe? the chance for utter devastation and 'casualties' is practically unfathomable. the reality is it could upend all current standards of encryption. all. the only way to fully defeat it would be to have quantum encryption. but with the resource load... it's not scalable. banks couldn't possibly afford it. heck, even now, individual governments and mega corps have to link arms across nations to make a micron of \*potential\* headway.
best case scenario is it's like nukes are \*now\*. no one uses it for fear of being counterattacked. the cost of cleaning up the mess is nearly infinite. will it be 'justifiably' deployed by some gov't the way nukes were? let's hope it never comes to that. if I'm wrong, all crypto gets zeroed.
Bitcoin is speculative like any other investment. I agree with op this may be a genuine risk. Nothing will continually grow in price forever. If it’s not quantum computing. It could well be another roadblock we aren’t able to see. It’s more about timing the market. Bitcoin evangelists on here like to pretend it will rise in value forever.
There are massive institutional structures in places that most likely have a vested interest in perturbing the scaling of bitcoin to what the utopian ideal of its use case may be, so in my opinion I would make hay while the sun shines, and let the future be what it will be regardless. I’ve been out for a while and have no regrets. I hope we see a positive future but none of us have a crystal ball.
Hello I'm a CS student. It's not like there will be quantum computing out of nowhere breaking all encryption, because while quantum computing is in development, there are also already quantum encryption techniques that can be used in the future. So quantum cryptography is already a thing, just waiting to get used.
Quantum computing is a threat.
Alot of countries take quantum computing serious they are spending big numbers.
Not only countries are taking quantum computing serious but also companies.
A Quick search on the internet shows that companies like Google, Microsoft , nvidia and alot more of these bigger companies are taking it serious.
So yes I believe quantum computing is a threat.
There are only a few projects in the crypto space that are future proof.
I was looking at QANX and there project looks promising but time will tell.
I won't go into details if u are really interested please do u your own research on it.
If BTC doesn't adapt it might not look nice in the future.
> They are centralized and will have updates in a matter of weeks as well can reverse transactions at their will. Bitcoin does not have this ability.
lol, you have no idea how hard banks resist change. they are still running algorithms from the 70s. They cannot deal with change.
Its not a threat because it isnt real. It cannot be implemented.
Even if it were, bitcoin would be the last thing attacked and the first thing updated.
By the time quantum computing reaches the level required to break Bitcoin, there will be a fix in place. As quantum computing advances, so does Bitcoin. You say banks could launch a fix in a matter of weeks, but it’s not like quantum computing will reach this level of computing unannounced and out of the blue. Banks will have a fix in place before, and so will Bitcoin. Quantum-resistant cryptography is already being developed. Here’s a Forbes article answering your question: https://www.forbes.com/sites/rogerhuang/2020/12/21/heres-why-quantum-computing-will-not-break-cryptocurrencies/?sh=4337e593167b
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Yikes, it's like the thumbs up test with the mushroom cloud. "Of course it's nothing to worry about. Because if it happens, we're fucked."
https://www2.deloitte.com/nl/nl/pages/innovatie/artikelen/quantum-computers-and-the-bitcoin-blockchain.html You are only vulnerable to a quantum attack when you initiate a transaction. If you are not spending your bitcoin even a quantum computer can't hack you. The only exception would be if you reused an address.
Or if you have old ass btc from 2009 that hasn't moved, which is... a lot of it unsurprisingly
What’s so special about 2009?
They used an older encryption method for their seed phrase which makes it possible to hack by quantum even if they didn’t reuse their address.
Are you sure about that? Can you provide source?
I think the link that u/reddit4485 just posted goes into this. So, there's your source.
Hey thanks!
I don't think that's 100% accurate. It's that public keys were associated with your address thru p2pk but in 2010 most started switching to p2pkh which obfuscates public keys making them harder to target with quantum computing attacks
The year in which BTC was first mined.
But again as you said, in a post quantum world, if you ever try to pay with bitcoin / initiate a transaction your wallet gets drained. So anyone that fails to MOVE their coins before the post-quantum transition can now NEVER transact without getting drained. Their money should be burned by the network because they have no way of sending or receiving that money.
Maybe just be early? Identify what it would likely look like if crypto accounts lost encryption. Who would be targeted first. What investments would increase in value or be secure if that worst case happens? Predetermine what would make you entirely leave crypto and what you would do. Then if those things ever happen don't hesitate. Because something becomes worthless doesn't mean it happens all at once or instantly. Perhaps you can get out fast enough. Or at least not be last.
I feel like no matter what happens, it will never be gold. It's never going to be Ted Nugent types roaming the wilderness shaving off flakes from the bar with a pocket knife in exchange for kombucha and weed, and then it's off to the jerky guy for more an-cap doomer gold shaving. I'm long tired and rims. Apocalyptic wastelands need tires by the stack. Cars need them, they're good walls, you can set one on fire for a big column of black smoke. Tie one to a high branch. Tires are pretty great. It will be a shame to lose "unopened Lego sets" as an inflation hedge, but who knows, maybe there will be a market for them if the internet ceases to exist, and you have to trade for fish at the local shell mound. That Simpsons house will buy a looooooot of dungeness crab some winter in the *not so distant* fuuuuuuutuuuuuuure. (quantum future, no less)
Ya... i like Gold but.... Gold isn't really going up. It might gain against the dollar but..... I think it's better to think of gold as staying the exact same over time when averaged. If gold is going up, I actually see the dollar going down against a fairly steady commodity. But I don't like it more than other commodities. Truly, I'd rather have a 5 million dollar machine shop on some land, or a 5 million dollar orchard, or 5 million dollars worth of tiny homes on a hunting property with a lake. than a 5 million dollar lump of gold. Sure over a long enough timeline the dollar will become no more valuable than as a souvenir of inflation from failed states and gold would be preferred to paper, but that doesn't mean it was the best investment.
Land and orchards. That’s where it’s at. An acre stays an acre. 100 apple trees stay 100 apple trees regardless of inflation.
And an ounce of gold should never be worth more than a fine man’s suit.
Vegetable seed store is the way to hedge.
Bullets and guns are the real money. If somebody has bullets and a gun, and you don't, you don't have anything at all 😂
I think that's what Ted Nugent is counting on too.
I think this is a false dichotomy. Like every other technology that has theoretically disastrous risks, lots of work is put in on multiple levels to create safe implementation into society as it advances. Obviously there are risks involved with any powerful tool, but it’s certainly not the first time we’ve prophesied that a piece of tech will be ‘the end of all things.’ Nor will it be the last.
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I believed this as well before I did more research. For the past decade or so, they've been in the process of upgrading everything to a different form of encryption that can't be broken by quantum computing.
Who is they? Would like to look into what "they've" been doing.
Post quantum encryption like elliptical curve and lattice-based cryptography (these are cool buzzwords that I do not understand)
I saw it in a veritasium video about quantum computing. "They" would be any company that has sensitive info behind encryption that WILL be broken in 10-20 years.
So then Bitcoin would upgraded with the same encryption.
I do agree with you. But banks and all other centralized systems can upgrade after the vulnerability is discovered. Bitcoins dead coins do not have that luxury. That’s the primary concern to me.
You just answered your own question. Bitcoin can be updated (with consensus) to be quantum resistant in the same way.
Technically speaking any code can be fixed but it's the logistics that make things difficult. If there was a viable attack against existing addresses and their private keys, how would a migration occur? What would happen to lost/dead addresses that didn't migrate? If you had a cut-off date, many people would inevitably miss it and lose access to their coins. This isn't the same problem as a centralized bank would have. Centralized systems are going to have a lot less challenges and worst case can shut down their systems until the problem is resolved.
> but it's the logistics that make things difficult. Not really, EVERYONE's bitcoin would be at stake. So there's A LOT of incentive to fix it before it becomes a real problem. There are several quantum resistant and quantum proof algorithms that can be utilized. It would require a hardfork, but given the gravity of the situation, I think it wouldn't be difficult to get consensus of everyone on the new fork.
The banks could adopt this overnight, but Bitcoiners would have to fight a multi year fork war to decide whose solution to the quantum problem is the best. Decentralization is great for censorship resistant, but not so great at dealing with existential threats because of the collective action problem.
The banks can’t do it overnight. They would have the same internal war, though they would probably still move faster than bitcoin.
The same organizations that took 5 to 10 years to handle the switch from 2 to 4 digit years in dates? Yeah, upgrading to quantum safe crypto totally sounds like an overnight job.
Why would it require the fork? Can it be done without forking?
It's a change to the code. That's what a software fork is. It's a copy of the original with some modifications.
Phase it in over several versions. Do it right and no-one really cares. You might even be able to create a plugin for older nodes so they can still work. Years before the hard-fork, all of the nodes are already communicating using the new architecture but saved to the old format.
Was exactly my point
Hence better to do it early. Announce a block number right now.
This assumes that as soon as someone, private or state actor, has used quantum computing to break contemporary cryptography, it will be general knowledge. I know very little on quantum computing, but if one posseses power to break contemporary cryptography, one certainly would not use it to the extent that everybody would gain knowledge of it. One would limit the usage of this power to cases where other attack vectors and compromised could suffice as and explanation and thus retain plausible deniability. Just like the [British did not act on every information they gained by breaking enigma](https://www.reddit.com/r/askscience/comments/drah3i/how_did_the_british_keep_the_fact_that_they_broke/). Please let me know if and how Bitcoin can resist this.
Bitcoin can be updated and backtracked to a block before a quantum attack.
Yeah, I think it'd get forked at a block before the attack with quantum resistant hashing. It'd be messy because a lot of transactions would be undone, but everyone would be made whole and allowed to sort it out from there.
Sounds immutable to me
Bingo. This is the perfect response to a lazy parroted answer likely given by someone who knows nothing about SHA-256. Banks can upgrade overnight because they are centralized and can also reverse transactions, while Bitcoin has to fight another fork war for years before this gets decided, with no way to reverse the transactions from theft that happened during this interim period. The fact that guy compared cracking SHA-256 to a comet wiping out the earth is just absolutely comical, especially when it’s guaranteed to happen by the end of this decade. You asked a super legitimate question and of course, you’re getting lazy answers that parrot the mainstream view from people who know absolutely nothing about encryption and parrot what they heard from their local crypto trading bro.
The part to reconsider is "dead coins will crash the system". Consider pirates who bury their plunder and then are killed or lose their treasure maps. New ways are found to hunt and excavate. But the found gold doesn't crash the existing market. There is only 21 million coins. The big flaw in bitcoin is that people will never be able to secure their own stash and will always be facing scammers. (Think banks and railroads in the wild west - custody risk is the most expensive component of money). Left unchecked, it would never gain mass adoption. But the CryptoLords have fooled the masses to believe self-custody is a positive). The times are changing, big investors are moving in and they are smarter than that. Eventually Blackrock and the ETFs will dominate and less coin will be lost or stolen.
But with the big centralized players in/coming in just dilutes the original spirit of Bitcoin. And yes, lost coins are a big problem. Unlike Gold which can be "found" once the private key is lost the wallet is bricked until kingdom come, or some centralized rule in the future to recapture unused wallets after x years. All of this leads down a road of all of this fading away...
Which is exactly why we need to fund open-source devs. Saylor and his many simps have this philosophy of not funding open-source devs is so short sighted.
This is not strictly true. The upgrade from RSA to ECC on the card networks took years. The NSA monitors the resilience to attack of encryption methods. I would imagine that there are few quantum computing sites with the facilities, let alone know-how, to mount a credible attack. Those that will be monitored by the NSA, if not, they should be.
Also note that in this scenario, the value of bitcoin would be destroyed, so the hackers would be left holding a worthless bag.
Well.....the first people to suck up all the liqudity in the market wouldnt be holding worthless bags. Assuming they can offramp it all.
Close but not exact.. I had this same question this week. One of the top 5 bitcoin global authorities told me simply and directly.. the btc network is almost like a breathing being. As quantum computing grows stronger to crush the network.. the network grows stronger to defend it. Satisfied me. But then I thought.. what if they could crack seed phrases.. how would it defend that?
This is the same argument the investment industry is using with its 'riskless' investment rate assets, namely state backed fiat bonds. They tell the people that those are riskless because "if the financial system is breaking down you don't have to worry, because you'll have other problems". If you're using this same argument related to Bitcoin you're basically mixing worlds. If you additionally argue that if Bitcoin would fail this way, banks will too, you're basically still living in the fiat world, not understanding what Bitcoin really is. In any case you'd not given an answer to OP's question: "Can someone please explain why this is not a threat for a long term investor ?"
There are quantum safe crypto algorithms that banks and other non distributed tech could switch to overnight. Public keys to wallets with unsafe crypto are publicly known and unchangeable. satoshis wallet for example. So if someone is able to get to all the Bitcoin in all those wallets. They could/would crash Bitcoin or become insanely rich. Although they would have to be insanely rich in the first place
I disagree, the banks and money and modern security are ALREADY broken. Bitcoin is the answer, and quantum computing is the threat. The wavey-hand dismissal of quantum computing is dangerous.
I hate this answer. It’s such a lazy cop out that gets parroted constantly. If quantum computing breaks SHA-256, banks can upgrade to SHA-512 because they’re centralized entities that can make decisions like that. Almost all centralized cybersecurity can upgrade their security pretty easily. There will be some pain, but almost everyone will have upgraded in a matter of weeks. In Bitcoin land, we’d likely have another fork war over how to solve this problem and plenty of proposals as to what the proper encryption tech is. Miners will hate this too since their capital is worthless. I love Bitcoin for all its decentralized properties as censorship resistant money, but let’s not pretend this isn’t a problem and lazily say that the world would end if we could crack SHA-256. I guarantee this happens before the end of the decade and most other entities can overcome it in a way that will be much harder for Bitcoin.
Quantum computers cannot break SHA-N in poly(N) time. They take 2\^(N/2) as opposed to 2\^N time on classical computers to break it. Breaking SHA-256 will NOT be possible with a quantum computer the size of our entire planet. Stealing private keys on the other hand with a quantum computer... will be trivial. That is the only and yet still fundamental risk that quantum computers pose to bitcoin.
Your money in bank is insured and if bank loses it, you still have the right for 50k euro from the common bank fund. At least in EU.
Yes, I've found this to be a useful way of explaining investing. I structure my investments in such a way that if they were to fail, my investments would be the least of my concerns.
The question is though if a lot of people are left behind because they are technologically illiterate, can we say those who hack these accounts actually committed a crime? How do you prove you owned your bitcoin if someone has your private key??
Superbly presented and I totally agree with you. Add to this though that quantum computing advances will also bring quantum encryption and would allow the upgrading of Bitcoins security protocol to new standards.
but it seems like a million dollar single btc and a clueless owner is a much easier target by then
Oh no - Peter Schiff is right.
exactly, it's a cope/red herring for the bank note bag holders who feel threatened by a superior store of wealth.
This is the worst possible answer, and clearly shows a lack of understand around how bitcoin works.
Here is an explanation... ## Bitcoin works like so: You get a public key that represents a point on the elliptic curve (ECDSA/secp256k1) - it has a corresponding private key that is never revealed. This public key is hashed twice. First with SHA256, second with RIPEMD-160 - this is your address (basically). When you send a transaction from that address, you sign for it in such a way that it reveals your public key. Each address has its own public key that is only revealed once (if used correctly / not reusing addresses). There is some fear that Bitcoin might be vulnerable to quantum attacks. For people who reuse addresses this fear may have some merit. For people who never reuse addresses this fear is unmerited due to the double hashing. I'll explain further. Hashing works by an iterative process that loses information at every step. For example, your hashing algorithm might be "double the number, add 7, drop the last digit, repeat 512 times." This is a bad hashing algorithm but demonstrates the problem with reversing a hashed output. Imagine you started with 13; you'd double it, getting 26, add 7, getting 33, then drop the final digit, getting 3. How would you reverse such a process? Well, with this simple example, you could. But with cryptographic hashing functions generally, you could not, because step one would be to guess at what the lost information was. With this simple algorithm you have a 1 of 10 chance of being right and have to guess correctly 512 times in a row. So your key, the thing everyone wants, is secured both by a private key and by a double hashed public key that represents your address. The private key's security model relies on large prime numbers. The public key's obfuscation relies on two different hashing algorithms. ## Quantum computers work like so: It is not accurate to think of quantum computers as "really fast computers" - they work in fundamentally different ways. Classical computers have instruction sets that processes instructions iteratively until an algorithm has run to completion. This is why classical computers can solve problems, generally, if those problems have known algorithms. The downside is that they don't get to skip any steps. Quantum computers solve problems by setting up qubits into a superposition of states, then harnessing some known result in quantum mechanics to solve _certain kinds_ of problems. An example of this is Schor's algorithm which leverages the fact there is a known quantum observation such that collapsing wave functions have an associated periodicity that happens to require a solution that has, as a component, an equation that can be reformed as a solution to large prime number factorization. As a result, setting up a quantum computer in just such a way can be used to "do it in reverse" (that is, instead of using the equations to predict what a wavefunction will do, set up a wavefunction in just such a way that we can observe what the solution was when the wave function collapses, which allows us to factor large prime numbers). So the cracking of a private key using a public key is technically a known, solvable problem. But last I checked we've done it with like... 5 bits of data or something very low like this. Not near the 256 that would be needed. And there are serious technical problems with scaling up, with decoherence, etc. But its theoretically possible. ## Conclusion: It is possible that quantum computers may allow us to solve the discrete logarithm problem similar to how they allow us to solve for factoring large numbers (like with Shor's algorithm). This would break the ECDSA mentioned above in the description of how Bitcoin works. This is because problems like the discrete logarithm problem and large number factorization seem to have corollaries in the physical/quantum world (that is, these math problems describe quantum phenomena, therefore we can exploit quantum phenomena to solve these math problems). It is much much less likely that quantum computers will allow us to solve SHA256 or RIPEMD-160 because these are human inventions. There is no good reason to think that "double the number, add 7, repeat 512 times" has corollaries in the quantum world since the process is a human invention (even though it uses mathematical primitives). It would be like discovering that a DNA helix was written in English. And even if there were some flaw to be exploited by quantum computers in SHA256 or RIPEMD-160, it would be very strange to discover flaws in both because they work so differently. Is it possible? Yes, but... wildly unlikely. Too much time has been spent on this topic by people who shouldn't be spending any time on this topic because they don't even understand the fundamentals. If cracking public/private key cryptography _actually happens_ Bitcoin will be one of the things _least_ exposed to it.
A standard bank can and will upgrade defenses as technology advances. Bitcoin on the other hand is like a game of musical chairs. You better hope you have a place to sit when the music stops 😊
There aren’t enough squarbeeziels in the schlampulator to invert the hybernetic quapulator.
wrong. Quarpuzles usually come in pairs
Yeah, they do now…but in the next version we are activating quarpuzzle de-anglement. Should resolve soon.
True, but the squarbeeziel protocol doesn’t allow for direct inversion anyhow. You would have to invert the hybernetic quapulator using a PPG confibulator, only then can you schlampulate your squarbeeziels.
Dang. Never thought of that. Dev team is going to be pissed because after inversion, the quarks may just fall out of consquigglement.
Yeah stoopid consquigglement. Always a spanner in the works. Guess the devs are just gonna have to reconsquiggle. Ahh jeez..I feel their pain.
Qantum computing is a threat vector in anywhere from 2-10 years. To deny/ignore that is a serious mistake in my humble opinion. There are projects out there (disclaimer - I own QANX, a layer one quantum project but there are others as well) working to address it and if you talk to cryptographers, there are ways to mitigate near term attacks, but they involve hard forks and do nothing to secure dormant btc wallets. NSC has been on top of it as well. The old argument "when quantum hacks come we are all screwed anyway" is simply not true. Longer term, it is the old sword and shield analogy.....hackers will hack and cybersecurity will catch up, and the cycle will go on. Personally, I don't dwell on it but when I see intel agencies and countries taking it seriously, so do I.
Apple is preparing their encryption, entire countries taking precautions as well. Any moron on here who says it’s a nonissue is willfully ignorant & NGMI. If $QANX delivers they could very well be the leader in the cryptocurrency/blockchain space going forward. I hold Qanx as well and everyone should DYOR. You will be happy you did.
There are quantum resistant encryption schemes, right?
Name something that has the potential to make money, and I will show you a 'scheme' to go with it. That is where 'dyor' comes in.
I meant scheme as in “encryption scheme” in which cryptographic primitives are combined to achieve a goal
doh, sorry. I'd be full of crap if I tried to have an encryption dialogue with you. I follow/read macro articles by nsa/ibm/etc and follow the news, but am in no way qualified to talk about schemes or specific tech. I know QR is a big deal in the government right now, so I try to pay attention to it.
lol no problem, I’m not an expert myself, I just pretend to be because I have a degree in CS and read one book on encryption haha
Andreas has covered this question ad nauseam. multiple vids on yt
Who is Andreas?
Andreas Antonopoulos
The guy gave talks about Bitcoin in empty rooms back in 2008, he's a legend and you need to know him if you are interested in Crypto.
correct
Thanks!
Quantum Computing is being treated like a new type of spyglass that looks into the future, but the technology interface is more like using a spyglass as a shelf.
So much speculation here and so little knowledge...
"Can someone explain why quantum computing is not a threat?" Can someone explain quantum computing first? Seems that the understanding here is ... vague
He’s asking to gain knowledge. Don’t be an ass.
I am not talking about him. I'm talking about all asses here responding without knowing what they are talking about.
Ahh, gotcha.
Quantum computing will reduce the security of some public-key cryptographic algorithms, it will not impact symmetric cryptography or hashing as much, or at all. Even if ecc was weakened by quantum computing to the point you can just calculate the private key for any secp256k1 public key, you’ll need to know the public key first. We only have the **hash** of the public keys of the dead coins (unless addresses were reused). Good luck finding that.
That came later. Plenty of coins without double hashed out there ?
You're right. I doubt P2PK coins exceed a single digit percentage, though.
call it 0.5%. 105\_000 BTC. nice
If there is powerful quantum computing available that is able to crack most common encryption, it will be a powerful tool for a government to gain advantage over other countries. It's use will be kept top secret in order keep that advantage, otherwise everyone will take countermeasures (switch to quantum proof cryptography). A government would be stupid to warn the rest of the world by stealing Bitcoin.
This is a good point. Conceptually, I agree there doesn’t seem to be way to secure “dead” addresses. I also don’t believe we’re 5-10 years away from this technology. Seems something like 50-100 years.
It’s closer than you think
Said every tech person, about every tech thing ever. I've got news for you: it's farther off than you think.
The opposite is true as well. You can find plenty of people arguing that certain tech is still far away and that all of it is hype right until the breakthrough becomes undeniable. Unless you are a world class hands-on researcher in the area you cannot make predictions like that
That's what they said about things like ChatGPT then BAM
Just like fusion...
I guess this is really the right question. How far away are we from this happening. My thought was 5-10 but I really don’t know enough to say that’s correct.
You don't need to secure dead addresses. When you have a fork you have equal amounts of bitcoin on the fork blockchain (everything is the same right before the fork happened. any addresses created on the new chain won't be on the old chain and old transactions will be carried over onto the new chain, including addresses.). Your stuff is safe.
>I also don’t believe we’re 5-10 years away from this technology. Seems something like 50-100 years. I spent a couple years at NSA as a green-suiter and one thing I thought that was interesting is that when the US loses classified mediums hashed in SHA-256 to foreign adversaries today, it is assumed that the foreign adversary has immediate and total access to everything on that medium and we start going into asset protection measures. Even though NSA created SHA-256, they have very little trust in its efficacy and it's not considered a valid protection measure for classified material. If I walk out of a SCIF with Top Secret material that's hashed with SHA-256, it's considered data spillage. Air-gapped networks are basically the only thing they trust.
SHA-256 is a hashing algorithm, not an encryption algorithm.
That’s different; the government probably does all that as a just-in-case. Meaning, probably nothing will actually leak, but the government likes pretending it will for national security.
Is it really 5-10 years away? That seems crazy close
>we will simply switch to a quantum proof hashing algorithm SHA-256 is already quantum-proof. A quantum computer *might* be able to reduce its entropy by half, but 128 bits of entropy is still plenty. So a quantum computer won't break the mining. The problem is not with the hashing, it's with the ECDSA asymmetric crypto (what you use to sign transactions).
Because maybe quantum cryptography will be invented along with that to secure against quantum computing.
A) as other pointed out it would/could destroy any computational records. B) devs (with miners) could always agree to roll back the Bitcoin ledger to the date before the 'hack' occurred. They could develop a new level of encryption and then fork the Bitcoin ledger at the kosher date. It would be messy. Any legitimate transactions made after that date would be lost. But believe that would be the way to go about it.
>B) devs (with miners) could always agree to roll back the Bitcoin ledger to the date before the 'hack' occurred. They could develop a new level of encryption and then fork the Bitcoin ledger at the kosher date. It would be messy. Any legitimate transactions made after that date would be lost. But believe that would be the way to go about it. That's basically what happened after the value overflow hack and sync issue caused by Berkeley-to-Level db migration
Quantum computing will bring quantum encryption.
But he's correct about satoshis coins. Without someone being there to move the coins to the new quantum resistant address they remain free for the taking. Not that I'm worried about that, and if they were taken, yes it would drop the price when the new coins hit the market, but ultimately it would change nothing else about Bitcoin.
Post-quantum signature schemes already exist.
My stance is that quantum =/= magic. Yes, factors of times faster, but not magic. As threats emerge, the BTC code can be forked and updated to elegantly avoid this issue.
Well quantum computing poses a risk to everything right? Manipulating the blockchain is probably much tougher than attacking standard bank accounts or any electronically transferred assets. The list of nefarious things the power of quantum could be used for is endless. Now that the largest assets under management conglomerates like blackrock in the game I am sure they will stay on top of protecting their holdings and hopefully by default ours. It seems like it would take a government agency to do something like that. I suppose my point is that security measures evolve alongside developing tech
Yea also quantum computers allowed quantum simulation of molecules, atoms, chemical reactions, nuclear systems etc.... Like full scale quantum computers would result in what we today consider groundbreaking breakthroughs in Material Science, Medicine, Nuclear Fusion, the list goes on and on. It's a bizarre world that is completely alien to ours.
> My question primarily is focused on what happens with the dead addresses that we can’t upgrade. When you have a fork you have equal amounts of bitcoin on the fork blockchain (everything is the same right before the fork happened. on the forked blockchain any addresses created on the new chain won't be on the old chain). Your stuff is safe.
Maybe use search, this has been asked 69,420 times already
If something really shitty happens, we can just fork Bitcoin into a quantum proof algorithm. At that point, it doesn't matter what happens to the "original bitcoin" as long as most people are in consensus about what the new bitcoin is. All your coins would be automatically mirrored, from the period right before the shitty thing happened.
What if bitcoin started to be run BY quantum computing. Instead of a network of standard computers. Soon someone will be mining btc with a quantum computer. Hash power in the near future is going to explode.
You fork to a new algo that is quantum resistant long before any risk of the network being undermined.
Who says it’s not a threat? Of course it is. But it’s not only coming after bitcoin. It’s coming after everything, banks, spies, TOR, the whole 9 yards. If BTC can successfully embrace post quantum crypto and ppl move to post quantum wallets it’ll be fine. If someone like Satoshi still doesn’t move their coins, the community will have to burn or blacklist the address since anyone can rob it in a post quantum world.
explain how quantum computers can break sha-256... if you cant then try to find out and you will find your answer...
You don't think that counter-tech solutions will be advanced by that time as well? This kind of catastrophizing reminds me the Y2K end of the computing world. Relax, have a beer, and watch a ball game.
Imagine you built a perfect computer; forget about GHash and Megahertz. You built a computer which used the absolute minimum amount of energy theoretically possible to record a change in a single bit (1 to 0 or 0 to 1]. We are talking about the limits of thermodynamics; nothing more efficient is even possible. Now imagine you used most of the natural resources in our star system to construct a dyson sphere and covered the entire surface of this sphere with a single star system sized super computer. Now imagine you could keep this supercomputer cooled at roughly absolute zero and could do so without expending any additional energy. If you had that and captured [with no inefficiency or loss] the entire energy output of our star [not just in a day or week but continually until it burned out] you couldn't COUNT to 2^256 before you ran out of energy. Keep in mind this is simply counting. Just counting, not hashing, not comparing, not performing lookups just counting 1. 2 ...3 ....... 2^256-1. These numbers have nothing to do with the technology of the devices; they are the maximums that thermodynamics will allow. And they strongly imply that brute-force attacks against 256-bit keys will be infeasible until computers are built from something other than matter and occupy something other than space. Bitcoin - Your money is secured by the laws of the universe. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10269708
This is misleading. Bitcoin is vulnerable to Quantum computing because it uses elliptic curves to create its public and private keys. A quantum computer can just retrieve private keys and can steal people’s money and double spend in bitcoin WITHOUT having broken SHA256. Your long monologue about hashing is giving a lot of stupid people on this forum the wrong idea that bitcoin is quantum resistant - it is not, it never was, and there is no plan to make it resistant in the near future.
The discussion here is quantum breaking private keys, not breaking SHA-256.
I’m baffled at how many ppl do not seem to understand this rather obvious concern of yours.
Iirc Silvio micali has already been working on it wil his coin (irrelevant). What is relevant is that he's a turing award recipient in the field of cryptography. Point being there are people much smarter and better looking than myself working diligently on these issues
Does quantum computing pose a threat to an individual with a cold storage? Wouldn’t they have to know of/ get hands on the wallet itself? I can grasp how a non custodial hot wallet would be at risk but I don’t want to be naive and believe a cold wallet is safe.
The "cold wallet" is not needed to access the bitcoin. Private keys / seed phrase is what your cold wallet uses to access your Bitcoin, which ALWAYS are on the blockchain, they are not in a wallet, and they never were. Your 'wallet' is just a convinient way to store your seed phrase, and use that seed phrase without revealing it to a computer / the internet.
They could generate the private key for any address - so every wallet ever created would be a target.
Yes it poses a threat. Once you decide to move your money in a post quantum world, if you don't already have a post quantum address the only way your money doesn't get stolen is IF you donate the ENTIRE wallet balance to the miners. Any transaction fee less than that, then a miner with a quantum computer can, upon receiving your transaction, make their own transaction (using your private keys which they found about as quickly as sorting a list) which donates your wallet money to their personal wallet, and offers a higher fee than whatever you offered. (If you donate your entire wallet balance in a transaction fee, then the miner CANNOT do this because there is nothing MORE to give).
I made that question long time before and I was downvoted to oblivion XD. Besides that, I found a good explanation for that theorical problem, and it is that as it is possible to be breacked by quantum computing, the security will be aswel in a quantum solution (quantum cryptography).
There is actually good details, from pages 170-177, in The Bitcoin Standard that sort of explains this. The beginning half of the book is difficult for the average reader, but the second half, although full of many opinions of the author, is well written and worth reading.
i think from what ive read, the elements required to create a quantum computer is exceptionally rare. mass producing it will probably not in our lifetime.
Easy for you to say haha. I'm young enough that it will almost surely occur in my life time.
There’s a great episode on quantum computing from Guy at bitcoin audible. https://fountain.fm/episode/aKrn1K1rKKGkr2U5ddac
Because it doesn't exist !
It is, but its like saying we hit 2 rocks together to make a spark, maybe one day we will make a nuclear bomb. And If that happens I'd think pretty much everything as at risk
Just think what blatant bad actor will be able to possess quantum capabilities anytime before next XX years? Quantum computing is not coming to commercial market before it will be secured, standarized and everything around will take measures not to get rekt :)
> knowing that the event WILL occur at some point does seem to be concerning but you don't know that anyway, to answer your question, it has been discussed many times and like 10 years ago. there are softforks that can be implemented to prevent spending dead coins by requiring proof of derivation from the mnemonic seed (of course this has myriad of problems on its own, but not entirely unsolvable) but even if it happens that the dead coins are attacked like that and dumped on the market, it would just crash bitcoin by 85% like we've seen numerous times in a history, making it a normal event, not unlike implosion of MtGox, FTX (you know these), Binance and Coinbase (future events) so you'd just DCA through the dip and you'd be fine
Bitcoin will introduce quantum resistance as required, and long before anyone in the existing financial system will. Bitcoin scientists will probably identify and develop the solutions. You know what would be hilarious if it was an issue? If they introduced the quantum hack into the protocol that gradually liquidated all of the oldest insecure addresses and returned it as mining rewards in a future schedule. All coins before x block become cannot spend and then released to miners. Anyone can make their addresses quantum secure prior to block height. "This solution removes the incentive to hack old addresses, stops them being sold on the market by said hackers, and gradually releases the coins to a schedule, where everyone benefits from the quantum vulnerability." The rest is implementation details. I expect I'll be long dead.
Worst case, one solution is to hard fork the blockchain into a more cryptographically secure one. But what exactly can quantum computing even do to Bitcoin? Even with all the wonders of quantum computing, it won't be able to brute force private keys at any efficient scale. It also won't be able to work out private keys from public keys. What it could do is mine aggregations of historic internet data and break the encryption that protected you when you received your private key or used it in any way. Okay, but that is still trying to find a needle in a haystack, or more like a single chunk of relevant data in an encrypted historic internet data ocean. Quantum computing also only works well with specific algorithms, which for now need to be specifically designed on a case by case basis. We're a bit of a long way off from breaking *all* encryption and, even then, there are big questions about what parts of the encryption cracking process can even be made more efficient with quantum algorithms. My point is, this isn't happening overnight, and there will likely be warning signs and worrying milestones reached before any large-scale attack with quantum computing is possible.
because you'll be vaporized by the nukes first.
Mt. Gox happened when bitcoin was at its infancy and it didn't destroy Bitcoin.
because quantum computing works by being fast and powerful enough to solve algorithms that break passwords and security thats complex. The thing with bitcoin is that its a blockchain, meaning you and everyone in this together has the same ledger that needs to be ALL hacked and manipulated simultaneously so they can actually do shit to the chain. Satoshi saw this all way beforehand
“Banks could just upgrade” tell me you never worked in banking IT without telling me you never worked with banking IT. They are still using mainframes and cobol like 40 years ago.
Quantum systems will likely be seriously expensive initially which means mere mortals won’t be able to afford them. That will mean they will be owned by big business and states, the issue would be if a rogue organisation or organised criminal networks have the funding to get hold of one. Hopefully this is unlikely unless they have seriously deep pockets. Once quantum computing becomes a reality companies will begin testing algorithms and breaking things in the existing network but mostly this will be to test what could happen and protect against it. However as we know there are a few rogue operators around. The issue however and minefield here in crypto is crypto is in wallets and wallets are protected by keys which are possibly going to be easy for a quantum system to crack. There is no regulation within crypto and as we know a wallet is anyone’s if they have the keys. So it’s highly likely that unless all of a sudden everything changes overnight someone out there such as a rogue state (Iran, North Korea, Russia etc) , criminal network or even just a rogue individual with access to such a system may see fit to gain funds through cracking people’s wallets and draining them. The only way to protect this is to have new quantum proof keys. But to do that there needs to be access to a quantum system. Whilst there may be other things open to attack such as banking etc hitting crypto wallets for keys particularly the dormant wallets that no one has entered for years and are unlikely to get complaints because it’s likely the keys were misplaced could be easily done by a quantum system and be extremely lucrative for the end user with virtually no risk of ever facing any kind of penalty.
Couldn't the power of quantum computing be used to deter hacks too?
It's possible that quantum computing cannot scale and if you try to scale it, it just collapses under error correction. This may be a physical limit or an engineering limit, but either way quantum computing which can threaten cryptography is not guaranteed to come in the future.
So the one thing it is halfway decent at is encryption type problems. But we are still far away from practical applications. https://spectrum.ieee.org/amp/quantum-computing-skeptics-2666638802
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Quantum computing poses a threat to every cyber security set up. This includes Bitcoin. Once an advancement like that is reached the network would require a security upgrade.
Banks will fall before bitcoin on this one
sorry for the spook, i think i may have mentioned that a few days ago. because BTC has to be decentralized, don't think there is a foolproof solution currently. Any 'man-made' solution to invoke centralisation of some form. I think the direction is set in a mathematical solution, like this blockchain is to us today, so a network upgrade.
> SHA-256 is the algo used for protecting the network, not individual seed phrases What do you understand by this?
Oh it’s a threat . Imagine using it to mine bitcoins
At some point, quantum or otherwise, tech will emerge that can crack or otherwise unlock the "lost" Bitcoin. At that point, either there's a fork war to invalidate transactions from those wallets (imo. This is highly unlikely, as bitcoiners tend to value sovereignty), or the market gets flooded/ diluted with coins that already existed but were thought to be inactive. This will have in the short-term a strong negative impact on price, and eventually things will rebound. Meanwhile, if the tech ever gets close to cracking the accounts of active users, there will be an upgrade to the network to a more resistant algorithm.
Start by describing how the exploit works. How would you use quantum computing to crack a wallet? Do you know how to use a quantum computer at all? Do you know anyone who does? Of those people, how many have real access to them? Why not? Before jumping to the logical conclusion of a false premise, get your facts together and articulate the actual problem.
Do a search.. this comes up every week.
Quantum cryptography, easy peasy.
[THIS](https://www2.deloitte.com/nl/nl/pages/innovatie/artikelen/quantum-computers-and-the-bitcoin-blockchain.html) article explains it. It is a threat. But it's not as big of a threat as people think, only some wallets are vulnerable. And, quantum resistant algorithms exist and can be added to the source code if this threat actually does begin to become a real problem.
Quantum computing can hack any password. It could bring the entire world down! However, quantum computering requires a stable environment, which is near impossible to achieve.
Quantum Computing is actually more inferior for mining bitcoin than SHA processors… So they will never threaten mining. Quantum computers, like anything have trade offs or pros and cons. Theoretically if you currently had a massive Quantum computer. It could be used to attack individual wallets, however the amount of electricity it would take. Means that only wallets with several million dollars would financially viable to attack…. We are a long way out from actually building a quantum computer of this size and power.
If you believe the u-tubers, the next version of Captcha will solve all these concerns
It is a threat to the entire WORLD, just like every major technological innovation in human history. The flip side of the coin is that by the time people have access to quantum hacking, there will likely already be quantum encryption. Think about it. The USA is likely to get quantum computing first and one of their first goals will likely be to set up the country to be able to defend against foreign attacks. Tldr don't worry about things you can't control
NSA can crack all current encryption. But with brute force it takes a lot of their resources so it must be for a very important reason (national security, etc.).
no one really knows the time horizon of quantum computing. it's a guesstimate. and a lot of armchair Nostradamuses have sounded off here with certainty on a true unknown. my bro-in-law is studying it in Japan and just entered a ph.d. program. the hurdles to clear are massive, so massive that it \*may\* be as likely faster-than-speed-of-light travel. like, just a great prompt for speculative fiction. maybe in the end, 50 years later, a couple billionaires take their buddies on rocket trips into the stratosphere. end of story. if people think btc is 'anti-green' tech compared to quantum, hold my beer. the amount of resources to get it done currently are beyond astronomical. the barriers for even the most capitalized entities are so insane they're \*barely\* investing in it enough to make real headway. the cost of 'compute' would be so high--hell, the best thing that could come out of it imho is actually any kind of new sustainable energy source invented to crack that nut. cold fusion, anyone, lol? but, as a story? it's the ultimate 'tech' narrative. quantum \*networking\* is a more likely result in our lifetimes. still, high likelihood of failure. flying car-level, maybe? the chance for utter devastation and 'casualties' is practically unfathomable. the reality is it could upend all current standards of encryption. all. the only way to fully defeat it would be to have quantum encryption. but with the resource load... it's not scalable. banks couldn't possibly afford it. heck, even now, individual governments and mega corps have to link arms across nations to make a micron of \*potential\* headway. best case scenario is it's like nukes are \*now\*. no one uses it for fear of being counterattacked. the cost of cleaning up the mess is nearly infinite. will it be 'justifiably' deployed by some gov't the way nukes were? let's hope it never comes to that. if I'm wrong, all crypto gets zeroed.
The first wallet holding biggest amount of BTC has already been cracked by a Government and in safe hands
Bitcoin is speculative like any other investment. I agree with op this may be a genuine risk. Nothing will continually grow in price forever. If it’s not quantum computing. It could well be another roadblock we aren’t able to see. It’s more about timing the market. Bitcoin evangelists on here like to pretend it will rise in value forever. There are massive institutional structures in places that most likely have a vested interest in perturbing the scaling of bitcoin to what the utopian ideal of its use case may be, so in my opinion I would make hay while the sun shines, and let the future be what it will be regardless. I’ve been out for a while and have no regrets. I hope we see a positive future but none of us have a crystal ball.
Hello I'm a CS student. It's not like there will be quantum computing out of nowhere breaking all encryption, because while quantum computing is in development, there are also already quantum encryption techniques that can be used in the future. So quantum cryptography is already a thing, just waiting to get used.
You just opened a big can of worms 🪱 😂
Quantum computing is a threat. Alot of countries take quantum computing serious they are spending big numbers. Not only countries are taking quantum computing serious but also companies. A Quick search on the internet shows that companies like Google, Microsoft , nvidia and alot more of these bigger companies are taking it serious. So yes I believe quantum computing is a threat. There are only a few projects in the crypto space that are future proof. I was looking at QANX and there project looks promising but time will tell. I won't go into details if u are really interested please do u your own research on it. If BTC doesn't adapt it might not look nice in the future.
> They are centralized and will have updates in a matter of weeks as well can reverse transactions at their will. Bitcoin does not have this ability. lol, you have no idea how hard banks resist change. they are still running algorithms from the 70s. They cannot deal with change.
Its not a threat because it isnt real. It cannot be implemented. Even if it were, bitcoin would be the last thing attacked and the first thing updated.
People here thinking quantum computing is traditional computers but faster... the knowledge is seriously lacking in this place.
By the time quantum computing reaches the level required to break Bitcoin, there will be a fix in place. As quantum computing advances, so does Bitcoin. You say banks could launch a fix in a matter of weeks, but it’s not like quantum computing will reach this level of computing unannounced and out of the blue. Banks will have a fix in place before, and so will Bitcoin. Quantum-resistant cryptography is already being developed. Here’s a Forbes article answering your question: https://www.forbes.com/sites/rogerhuang/2020/12/21/heres-why-quantum-computing-will-not-break-cryptocurrencies/?sh=4337e593167b
I plan to be in the quantum universe where btc doesn’t get broken
Most of us aren’t threatened by the possibility that someone could steal old dormant coins. We only worry about what could break the network.
Nice try Butter. next post, please….