Topic: How will Quantum computing affect Bitcoin? (Read 551 times)

Quantum computers have complex capabilities, and my guess is that their emergence could be dangerous for Bitcoin. One of these risks is their strong computing power. When we talk about the computing power of today's computers, we need to know that their power over computers Quantum cells are much, much smaller than we think.
And this computing power is one of the advantages that can hit the blockchain network and private keys.

In the cryptocurrency community, there is a nagging fear of quantum computing. Is it possible that it can decrypt cryptocurrencies and the encryption that protects them? I'm not sure how close that is. Do the headlines about "quantum superiority" imply that my personal information is at risk?

The short answer is no. But let's take a closer look at this phenomenon and try to figure out why this is the case and how quantum computing works.But let us delve a little further into this phenomenon to see why this is the case and how quantum computing can deal with cryptocurrencies.

To begin, let's describe quantum computing and the classical computing we're all familiar with, and see how the two terms compare and contrast. Quantum computing is similar to “classical” pre-computer computing in terms of paradigm.Quantum computing is approximately equivalent to "classical" pre-1900s physics and "modern" physics, which includes Einstein's relativity and quantum physics insights.

As a result, quantum computers are not uniformly better than classical computers, which will be immediately important to the debate. When people talk about "quantum dominance," as stated by Google GOOG -2.4 percent and/or China, they just mean that a quantum machine will perform a task better than a classical computer, possibly one that is impossible to perform for any purpose.

For me quantum computer seems complete to solve many issues including blockchain. However I think we cannot yet say the accurate thing what quantum computer can actually do. The actual scenario matter before we can conclude that quantum computer will effect bitcoin and Cryptos because of this and that and so on.... Let us wait further official launching which I think it takes more time as it is complex.

I never really pondered on this topic of qantum computing since I won't be alive when it becomes available for personal use. So my answer to that is that quantum computing is only going to be a threat to bitcoin if it becomes available for public use, I think right now we don't have to worry about it because they don't even have the complete understanding of it so don't wrap your beads too much about it.

Of course, quantum computers will have a big impact on the existence of cryptocurrency. An increase in computing power will have both a positive effect on its mining and a negative effect on the possibility of breaking our secret keys. However, we will definitely be able to find out when they appear enough for us to see the practical results of their capabilities.
As for their expensive cost, then with their mass production and the improvement of their production, their value will fall. I have already read that quantum computers of low power are installed in schools in China to study their principle of operation and capabilities.

Miners and hackers will be the ones to benefit the most about the public release of Quantum Computers. Their theoretical power is enough to ensure that no GPUs will be needed anymore in mining. Thus reducing the chances of GPU Scalping as well, keeping the PC gaming industry alive. On the downside however, hackers getting a hold of quantum computers will make it incredibly easier for them to tap into virtually everyone's private addresses, so hacking and stealing bitcoins will be regular news to us.

From a economic point of view, yeah that would likely have disastrous economic short term effects, but I'm not entirely sure that long term effects would be negative. If they were to be stolen, and we don't consider the morality in that right now, it would mean that there's more coins in circulation, which depending on what point of view your looking at might devalue the amount of coins, because as you know some people treat lost coins as "donations" to the network.

I'm still convinced, it will be a very long time until anyone with a motive to do it i.e common criminals, will be able to access quantum computers. I'm not convinced that the government, whatever that one might be would have any real motive. I think we like to think they're threatened by it, but I don't think in its current state it is.

I don't know the ideal solution, ideally we should never really assume coins that haven't been moved for a very long time, are "lost" so "burning" them without permission from its owner doesn't quite sit well with me. So, now to move onto the ethics of dealing with this scenario; is it better to burn the coins without permission in an attempt to better everyone else using the currency or is it better to allow those coins to be attacked, despite their owner having lost them, whether that's through choice, mistakes or not being around anymore. Its something which will need a decision, but quite frankly I'm not quite sure what's the correct way of going about it, obviously this has been brought up a lot over the years, and I think most would lean to the greater good, but I'm not a big fan of that viewpoint.

This is why I'm hoping people far brighter than me are in charge of this decision. I don't know the true economic damages that something like this would cause. If its just short term, which I believe short term would be the worse of the two, then that isn't so bad for a currency. If it has longer term effects, that could be detrimental to the survival of the currency (which I find implausible) then that's something that I imagine that needs to be taken into consideration. Even then though, burning coins that don't belong to you doesn't bode well with me. My question, and this might be more of a rhetorical question is; does anyone really know the true implications that it would have on Bitcoin?

Now is not the best time to think about quantum computers. Let's solve the problems that we have now.

Most of Satoshi's block rewards are vulnerable; Bitcoin Core was configured for P2PK in the Coinbase transaction and that makes up for approximately a million (IIRC) of his coin or at least those that weren't moved or presumed lost/burned. Considering that each address has 50 coins, and at current prices, that would be north of 3 million per address. That is assuming Bitcoin doesn't grow further than 60K, which is hard to tell. The economic impact of losing that many coins won't bode well.

Okay, so this is probably the only legitimate counter argument that could be presented that's for quantum computers becoming a risk to cryptocurrencies, and I can't really argue that fact except for; By the time quantum computers come available which are capable of breaking the ECDSA, I'd expect us to have a solution via a quantum resistant algorithm already implemented. Of course, this would require a fork, and not everyone would be willing to move or some people aren't going to move. At that point, you'd probably expect that a lot of coins would be available to target, but if we have enough notice, and good enough reasons to fork then I would expect the majority of people would move their coins to the quantum resistant algorithms.  

So, this just leaves the coins which have been lost prior, those that didn't want to move, or those that didn't hear about the fork. These are risks, and unfortunately will happen when it comes to it. These coins could be targeted, however if they've been given good enough reason to move, and enough timeframe then they themselves are taking the risk of leaving their coins there. So, they accept the risk of losing them.

That being said, when this does happen the affordability still comes into consideration. If its only high profile companies, and governments that have access to quantum computers capable of breaking ECDSA, then they aren't likely to be interested in coins that have been left. First of all, there's no real motive. The issue is when quantum computers become accessible to your common criminal, those are the ones which would more than likely be interested in targeting these coins, but by the time that happens there will be enough notice, and will allow people to weigh up the pros, and cons.

I don't think in the grand scheme of things, its a major issue. There's multiple factors which have been mentioned above which will delay the threat of quantum computers, which should allow adequate time for planning, and implementing a solution, and having those that having doubts about moving to a different protocol, time to make up their minds.

We could burn them, given enough notice that does seem very extreme though, and I'm not sure that's the best decision. Undoubtedly, any coins that are left that can be exploited, will likely be exploited eventually, and that would likely have an effect on the short term value of Bitcoin.

If the country's primary goal is to evade sanctions and improve financially instead of espionage or anything similar, they'll probably opt to attack Bitcoin. I'm pretty sure North Korea isn't developing quantum computer though. If not, then I think most countries would just start with deciphering the encrypted communication.

The problem with quantum computers isn't with the kinds of algorithm that we could move towards in the future but the exposed public keys which would be inherently vulnerable even after the network forks to a new algorithm. Do you burn them or do you just leave a few million Bitcoins to be able to be exploited. Sure, quantum computers are expensive and the cost/benefit doesn't add up but as time goes by, these Bitcoins could eventually be a suitable target. You won't know if anything was broken by ECDSA; spending the 50 Bitcoins from the exposed addresses could just very well mean that whoever controls the private keys wanted to spend them.

Highly unlikely at least for a while. Its been discussed so many times its almost becoming tedious. Quantum computers which are actually designed to break algorithms don't only apply to Bitcoin, but apply to everything that implements those algorithms. That's including banks, Google, and whatever else you can think of. However, quantum computers aren't particularly good at everything, they are designed to be good at one thing in particular. Therefore, to own a quantum computer which needs to be stationed in a controlled environment isn't likely going to fall into the hands of criminals, unless of course you consider the government to be criminals.

The government, military, and potentially high profile companies are the only ones that would be able to afford quantum computers, and even then a smaller division of this number will actually have a need for quantum computers. I would say that the government, and military are the only ones which could justify the cost. Now, you could say that the government are hostile towards Bitcoin, but that entirely depends on the government your talking about. Many governments have actually successfully regulated Bitcoin, and therefore Bitcoin earns them more money than not having it. By breaking Bitcoin if that was even theoretically possible would actually reduce the amount of money they earn. Bitcoin, isn't likely to replace fiat currencies, at least not for a long time. In fact, Bitcoin is probably not something that would replace it, but a similar implementation of Bitcoin might. Therefore, Bitcoin in its current state is of limited threat, and actually benefits the governments that have successfully regulated it.

By the time, Bitcoin was to become a threat or quantum computers became affordable enough to own for others, Bitcoin as well as banks, and other big industries would have already implemented quantum resistant algorithms, effectively making it redundant.

Quantum computers aren't even particularly good for hacking, they are good at breaking a specific type of algorithm, and wouldn't be able to be used for anything other than that. The biggest benefit of a quantum computer is using it in the military for obvious reasons.

Which just to be clear;

1. We are fair bit off a quantum computer being able to achieve the level of qbits required.
2. Barely anyone would be able to afford it.
3. Even if they could afford the quantum computer, and be able to run it highly unlikely they wouldn't be able to justify the costs.

Cryptography and quantum computers

A lot of digital ink has been spilled on how quantum computers pose an existential challenge to asymmetric cryptography as it is commonly used. As a result, we will not go into great detail about this, instead focusing on the aspects that are important to the analysis in this article.

A private-public key pair is developed in asymmetric cryptography in such a way that the two keys have a mathematical relationship. The private key is kept private, while the public key is made publicly accessible, as the name implies. Individuals can use their private key to create a digital signature that can be validated by someone with the corresponding public key.This system is widely used in the financial industry to prove transaction validity and honesty.

Asymmetric cryptography's security is founded on a mathematical concept known as a "one-way trick."The public key can be easily obtained from the private key, but not the other way around, according to this theory. All known (classical) algorithms for obtaining the private key from the public key take an astronomical amount of time to complete and are therefore impractical.However, in 1994, the mathematician Peter Shor published a quantum algorithm that can break the security assumption of the most common algorithms of asymmetric cryptography. This means that anyone with a sufficiently large quantum computer could use this algorithm to derive a private key from its corresponding public key, and thus, falsify any digital signature.

Quantum computers have tremendous capabilities compared to ordinary computers, they have enormous speeds millions of times higher than ordinary computers, this is theoretically capable of attacking the Bitcoin network, but it is still theoretical until now and has not been actually used, I think that efforts have already begun to confront this possibility and there will be what Anti-quantum is called in the sense that there will be technologies that make it impossible for quantum computers to attack a blockchain.

A better example would be the million Bitcoins that Satoshi has (presumably) mined and never moved.

It is secure, for now. If you can get to a sufficient qubit, you would reduce the complexity of the operations to 128^3. It'll be secure if quantum computing doesn't get any more advanced, but that simply won't be the case.

The elliptic curve formula that is used in generating a public key from a private key is actually not a one-side equation. Because it is too difficult to calculate and it would take millions of years, it is considered to be "impossible". But the technology that quantum computers use can theoretically calculate a private key out of a public key and this is not a random thought of mine.

I also read some articles about quantum computers and it would greatly affect Bitcoin or Crypto world. But I know producing a quantum computer quite expensive, very high cost. And the current quantum computer has not been widely used, and will it really affect the cryptographic money? That has not been proven. So you don't need to worry about quantum computers

Question: How will Quantum computing affect Bitcoin?
Answer: Quantum software will appear for crypto hacking

Agreed. Quantum computer's effect on crypto and in particular Bitcoin will be massive. It will help with token mining which is getting more and more complex to solve with each minted BTC.

Apart from that, the technology breakthrough will help in solving lots of problems like climate change, AI etc...

Quantum computers can make and break the cryptocurrency industry. On one hand, faster computing power means easier mining, at least for a cheaper rate than what we're at right now. GPUs wouldn't be scalped anymore, so the PC gaming industry is kept alive and is not consumed by the greed of the scalpers. On the other however, private keys being hacked and sold in the black market will be more common. Since a computer that can literally guess every combination will be powerful enough to guess everyone's private key.