Topic: I don't believe Quantum Computing will ever threaten Bitcoin - page 8. (Read 5478 times)

I don't make a research about quantum computing and I don't have any knowledge about that, I only user but I know a little about computer. My opinion, no matter if there are the newest computer design or technology, it will not threaten bitcoin but it will support the network so bitcoin or cryptocurrency could grow more than we thought.

Maybe the newest computer will solve the calculation of bitcoin mining so it could break every problem in the bitcoin mining. Like what we see on the bitcoin mining process, we see the newest GPU release and help the mining process. That will happen too with the quantum computing so it will support and help cryptocurrency.

The problem has always simply been that power generation is centralized, concentrated in a few hands.  Large power plants producing it, and large elaborate distribution lines to deliver it.  This is not how it could have been, but a few decided it should be this way, for obvious reasons, for the sake of profit.

But things have been slowly changing since solar panels have been mass produced, getting cheaper, and gaining in efficiencies.  With decentralized power ( ... decentralized, funny aye  )  there would be no need for large power plants or expansive distribution networks.  At worst there may still be a need for small local power distribution centers for emergencies, but nothing more.  ... The cost would solely be the production, and installation of the solar panel hardware, and the energy free.  There has always been animosity from those that wish to profit from centralized power, and this will continue until the end.  The end being fully decentralized power.

Throughout history energy has been commoditized, but in this modern age this is no longer necessary.   In this universe, besides space and time, energy is the most abundant thing.  The water we drink, or the oxygen we breathe is far more rare than energy, and yet we pay each month for power.

Nuclear power, fission or fusion, when developed enough, and made small enough will be useful for areas that have little to no access to the sun.  Like maybe Pluto.     Or, interstellar travel.

I don't see free power as a threat to bitcoin.  Free power may seem to make the cost of producing btc less, but then any extra cash a miner has would be used for more mining hardware, increasing btc's difficulty, which increases its cost of production, which helps to increase its price, and so on.  

I agree that quantum computing doesn't offer an advantage in every situation. I think there is often a perception that quantum computers are just faster than conventional computers, but that's not really the case. Where they excel is in dealing with extremely complex problems. The advantage of a quantum computer is that the complexity scales differently.

A conventional computer can solve a problem 'x' in 'y' seconds, taking 'z' number of steps.
If you build a faster conventional computer, it can maybe solve problem 'x' in 'y/2' seconds, so twice as fast - but it will still take 'z' number of computational steps to do so.
The advantage of a quantum computer is that it can drastically reduce 'z', the number of steps required. This is why they are 'faster'.

It's quite fascinating when you get into it. If you are interested, have a look at Grover's algorithm.

Fusion is an entirely different process to traditional nuclear power - in fact it's the exact opposite. It doesn't use radioactive decay at all.

Nuclear power as we know it today is produced by fission. Essentially fission is where heavy atoms (uranium) are bombarded by neutrons, which causes them to split and release energy. The neutrons that come out of this fission then hit other heavy atoms and can cause a chain reaction. It can be a runaway process, and controlling it is kind of analogous to a brake pedal - someone at the plant always has their foot on this metaphorical pedal in order to keep the reactions under control. There are obviously a lot of dangerous by-products, partly the leftover split atoms, but also (more dangerous) heavy atoms that absorb neutrons but don't split, and can become some nasty forms of plutonium.

Fusion is the opposite. This is where light atoms (hydrogen isotopes) are fused together to form helium, neutrons and vast amounts of energy - a lot more than fission. Two further benefits are that a) there is no dangerous waste as both the source materials and the waste products (helium plus neutrons) are non-radioactive, and b) there is no danger of an uncontrollable chain reaction because fusion relies on the continuous input of power, if the power stops then the reaction cools and stops.



Not sure about this one. In theory if fusion becomes straightforward and it's an open marketplace, then companies will compete to drive the price down. If it's all state-controlled or a monopoly though, who knows...

I speculate, most likely it will be a government - one of the five eyes, or China - or an entity that is a de-facto arm of a government, and I think they will absolutely be a malicious actor. It will be in this entity's interest to keep the fact they have the QC technology sufficient to break ECDSA and other encryption algorithms a state secret because it will allow their government to spy on their enemies for longer.

If a government develops QC technology that can be run efficiently, and use said technology to steal a few hundred thousand bitcoins, the coin they steal would be worth billions as of when they steal the coin, but its value would quickly plummet once many people start complaining their coin was stolen after practicing good security practices. It would also be a warning to other governments, banks, communications companies, and others to upgrade their encryption systems ASAP, and to stop using "now broken" encryption systems immediately, even if this means taking services offline for some time.

If a government were to develop QC tech that can efficiently break modern encryption algorithms, I think they would prefer to use it to decrypt intercepted communications via the internet and elsewhere, with the hope their enemies will continue using "broken" encryption algorithms. Last month, a bunch of European internet traffic was rerouted via China for two hours, and there have been similar incidents before. These incidents could be true errors, or they could have been the Chinese government collecting encrypted internet traffic hoping to decrypt it, with current or future technology.

Yes, I should've probably disclose in more details.
When we say "it is quantum safe signature" we imply "it is probably quantum safe signature" due to the fact that someone had already mentioned in this thread, we don't have a quantum computer yet. What we need here is a solution with an encryption variability to have the opportunity to transfer new keys for the analogues of old addresses after hard fork. If we won't have this feature we'll have to make multiple hard forks with every "new" quantum computer. Another reason is a performance decline because a lot of PQ sigs are "heavier". Everybody are waiting for NIST PQC results. Actually this is what one of our products is about and this is one point of the articles. So it is difficult as a one time task but if you do it several times it requires an architecture rebuilt to make it easy and reliable. Plus we're talking not only Bitcoin but any other blockchain.
So it is an issue.

Quantum computers are not going to replace the computers as we know them. They can be considered like a GPU that will be attached to a normal computer, providing speed for some limited operations. Their usage will be very limited specially at the beginning and their price very high.

Hello everybody. Nice to meet so many people interested in quantum threat to a blockchain in one place. We've been working on one post-quantum project for 2 years and of course we're talking with physicists, pq-cryptographers and other academic minds. And I just want to add a couple things and links you guys might like.
 
First — probably you will be interested in reading about Neven's law (https://www.quantamagazine.org/does-nevens-law-describe-quantum-computings-rise-20190618/). It is not a "law" of course but an interesting thing to keep in mind.
Second — the most powerful quantum chip for today is 128-qubit chip produced by Rigetti (https://medium.com/rigetti/the-rigetti-128-qubit-chip-and-what-it-means-for-quantum-df757d1b71ea).
Third — how many quits you need to crack a blockchain. It depends on a type of encryption, but the point is, it is 2300+ (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Elliptic-curve_cryptography#Quantum_computing_attacks)
Fourth — Intel thinks we'll get 1000 quits by 2024 (https://spectrum.ieee.org/nanoclast/computing/hardware/intels-new-path-to-quantum-computing) and ECDSA will be at risk by 2027 (https://arxiv.org/pdf/1710.10377.pdf).
Fifth — implement post-quantum encryption to existing blockchains? This is a close to impossible task.
Sixth — That's what NIST says about PQC in their project (probably all of you aware of it but https://csrc.nist.gov/Projects/Post-Quantum-Cryptography):

So, yes, quantum threat is a thing to be aware (and probably afraid of) and yes, we gotta start working on it now. Plus, thanks to smart people from NIST we're in good hands. Btw we're working on a utility to secure all of the blockchains from it. I hope this week we'll publish an article about quantum thief where we will explain why the only thing that will save us from it is game theory (and PQC, of course).

I hope I didn't miss anything. Will be happy to answer your questions (but I can get here only a couple times per week max so don't wait for fast replies, sorry)

The problem is that we are extremely far from understanding how our brains function.  So far in fact from knowing, that we could be thousands of years or maybe millions of years from this type of understanding.  We just don't know how much we don't know.

Take for example, having read recently that they have discovered tiny tubules at the ends of dendrites.  They suspect that besides transferring chemicals and electrical impulses at the synapses, we may also be transmitting bits of light (some call it photons) across that junction.  This could mean that our brains are actually photonic in nature.  This is what I mean by "we have no clue".

We can't replicate it or build it into a machine until we have a full understanding of it.

It is still fun to ponder what self-consciousness might be, but to say we can build a machine to mimic this, or that one of our machines will happen upon it one day is just silly.

Quite correct AverageGlabella.  Concerning whether adding more complexity to bitcoin's code would slow it down in the future: I hate to state the obvious but, whatever. In the future, if or when it is necessary to add more code, the hardware in general will be orders of magnitudes faster.  That is, processing and therefore communications will be much faster, and so increasing the amount of code necessary to complete a transaction will be of no consequence.  It is difficult for humans to discern the difference between 10 nanoseconds and 100 nanoseconds, adding more code will not be noticed with much faster hardware.

Anything compiled using AES is already crackable with the computers we have today, When satoshi created bitcoin he did not know wtf a Asic was, he Had no clue asics would come into existence. Wait till asic2.0`s come online. They will be able to crack AES even easier. There will be a single chip made that has more hashing power than all of the bitcoin farms combined in the next 20 years.

That's the point of reading all the replies. This not a discussion about quantum computers becoming a problem currently but in the future and how we would deal with that. We have touched upon why it hasn't been implemented currently a few times in the discussion and although you do bring up a point of making Bitcoin unnecessarily slow right now in the future it is something that will have to happen if we ever do reach the point of a 2000+ qubit quantum computer or whatever would be the required amount to become a serious threat to the algorithm.

Didnt bother to read all the replies but seriously you think Bitcoin has a option at the moment to really implement quantum resistant cryptography? Bitcoin beings so slow, would we even slower due to transactions taking lonher to verify due to the complexity in confirming such transactions.

Nuclear fusion is something which is getting closer by the day in fact in Boston they recently got a 50 million dollar dollar investment for their nuclear reactor. They believe they've sussed out the laws and its only a matter of building the plant. The theory has always been there and theoretically its safer than other traditional nuclear power management systems however we must consider chernobyl was considered safe no matter what due to the fail safe system they had in place. A great program was recently released which showed how out of depth they really were and this start up in Boston that claims to have all the answers and the only missing puzzle piece is actually building it has no track record. Therefore despite the claims of nuclear fusion being the future we have to consider how far and how many hurdles we are yet to hit.

Despite the lack of experience lets assume that all goes well and nuclear fusion becomes a thing. How accessible will this be to the public? Do we really believe energy companies will be providing cheap energy via nuclear fusion or will this still be reserved for the elite very much like quantum computers?

We also have to consider the moral obligations and the public viewpoint of nuclear power. At the moment there are multiple different organizations which are trying to combat the development of nuclear power plans and which could put a halt to nuclear fusion. I'm actually for the development of nuclear energy and providing a more efficient energy system but I can understand the concerns about accidents and management of waste and how it can literally destroy the environment it is in.

In conclusion even if nuclear fusion becomes a thing in the next few years and quantum computers could be cooled at the temperature required at a decent price I highly doubt that other than the wealthy elite the power of nuclear energy will not be easily accessible.

I suppose the final question that sits beneath everything else is: is self-consciousness itself an emergent behaviour? I'm still unsure about the singularity, I take your point, but I won't dismiss it completely until this question has a definitive answer. Stuff that seems magical fantasy today could be mundane and commonplace to the AIs of the future.

It is this very interesting emergent behavior that I find curious.  One can write code to enable these artificial networks to learn on their own, even though it is very tricky to do so.  A slight change in the parameters for the network's environment and we end up with large instabilities in the network's internal architecture, which produce garbage.  These systems are difficult to stabilize, but once the right parameters are found the networks can produce solutions on their own.

And so, some seem so worried about the fast and powerful quantum computers, but maybe some should actually be worried about an AI building its own algorithm to find a private key, and us humans are left not understanding how it did it.

hehe, of course, I know full well that AIs are still too primitive for any such silly notions.  And I ignore to comment on those that mention "the singularity" since its just nonsensical fantasy.

Just a quick comment on this because I don't want to derail the thread. The evolution of AlphaGo I think demonstrates how quickly things are moving. A few years ago everyone was saying a machine could never beat the world's best Go players. Then (2015?) AlphaGo was developed and trained initially by humans through the input of a vast number of previous games. Learning algorithms subsequently built on this, but there was a big human input, guided by Go experts, and a lot of reliance on just brute-forcing the calculations. In 2016 it beat the world's best human player quite comprehensively.

The 2017 follow-up was AlphaGo Zero. This time they just fed it the rules and nothing else. They got it to teach itself. Within a short time they put it up against the original AlphaGo, and the entirely self-taught version won 100-0. It is indeed reaching the stage where computers aren't just better than humans at calculating, they're also better at learning how to calculate, and at learning how to learn. There is some exciting (scary?) emergent behaviour coming out of this.

To a certain extent I've already seen this starting to happen.    I spend my time dealing with learning algorithms, pattern recognition, sometimes termed AI.  Within the process of training these little AI networks, the algorithms produce their own algorithms to then produce the results I'm trying to make them achieve.  But at the end of this training, I, "the human", does not understand how the AI decided to produce these final algorithms. Or rather I struggle to find the reasons for its internal organization.  I did program it, but my programming is just a crucible I've created to foster the growth of these AI networks.  (I have been told by some of my benefactors that I musn't mention this odd behavior of my working networks to others.  The higher ups may not like it.  But I still find it curious.)

This concept exists throughout the AI algorithms that are currently spreading into almost everywhere it can fit.

...

Getting back to the OP.  My first reaction to having read that "someday some quantum computer may break bitcoin", was to think that the commentator doesn't understand "quantum" computers, and doesn't understand that bitcoin is programmable.  Regardless, I see it as just a comment to spread fud, to make people think that bitcoin was going to crack under a large enough computer.  Its almost as bad as the fud remark that says "any day now bitcoin's creator is going to show up and use his back door to steal your bitcoins".  In this case the commentator does not understand what is open source.   These sorts of fud remarks will continue to spread until the majority become informed about bitcoin's basics.  Until then, its up to us here to continue to teach the rest.

... Then we get into the possibility of power from nuclear fusion. I know it's one of those things that is always 'a few years away' - but cheap energy (free? unlimited?) is getting closer all the time.

I think this kind of highlights the fact that technology is racing ahead of us, and it won't be long before it goes way beyond the ability of mere humans to understand, and it is computers themselves doing the thinking and theorising. The most promising form of defence against quantum attacks currently under development seems to be NTRU, which relies on some quite esoteric lattice-based maths which is frankly already beyond my ability to comprehend. In a few years' time I can imagine that it is computers themselves coming up with these models, and humans struggling to keep up. It's an infinite arms race into the distance really. So long as there is one side attacking and another side defending, it's difficult to see where it will stop - unless there is some fundamental facet of quantum mechanics that provides a final barrier to one or both sides.