Topic: In 10 years from now a quantum computer (Read 771 times)

Mine-able yes, profitable no. There will always be a group of hobbyists willing to mine for fun, or with "free" (renewable?) energy available to do so. Also the asics are getting even more efficient, so Cannan's idea of embedding a few asic chips in common household appliances will return. Yeah, your smart fridge/ac/router/tv/heater/whatever might have 1~10 THs, why not?

Its like getting one of those usb mining sticks and plug it permanently into your "smart" tv, just because you want to help the community and it doesn't make you go bankrupt anyway.

I know i will probably get into that group, with a node as well, because its one way i can help and thank Bitcoin, for letting me eat today, when the politicians and institutions stole our wealth and nobody else cared.

So i guess those will belong to those willing to invest in quantum computing, which is still so far much more expensive than any potential gains...

The Q System One is a beautiful piece of engineering, but the quantum computing future is still a way off (by IBM

We will have a quantum secure network. That is not an issue, but the 'shalecoins', coins with no owner, will become active. https://bitcointalksearch.org/topic/bitcoin-as-shalecoin-5134441

And that will be the most challenging thing. https://bitcointalksearch.org/topic/the-most-challenging-thing-5166180

Write that quantum computers will be able to crack any digital codes in a very short time, including picking up the keys to our wallets for cryptocurrency. Therefore, it would be more correct to point out that quantum computers will not destroy a cryptocurrency, but will make it defenseless. Of course, it remains to hope for the emergence of new technologies of protection or fundamental changes in the secret keys from the wallets of our cryptocurrency.

Why there are suggestions that a quantum computer will be able to destroy the cryptocurrency?  What are the prerequisites for this?  In my opinion, if computer technology changes, then cryptocurrency technologies will also be improved.

It is a problem if we have quantum computers now, but no, it is still that early that we don't need to think about it by now.

I don't think developers will just let destroy Bitcoin like that, obviously, they will be ready when the quantum computers are already up. I mean I agree with some of the posts here to use and play with it because damn! Ready Players One will not be a sci-fi movie or a dream anymore.

we've had these discussions before and the consensus (i think) is that it's not ethical to steal/lock satoshi's coins. bitcoin users never opted into a rule system where their outputs would be forcibly locked after a certain time. i understand the motives to do it but a fork like that would definitely split the network. it's too politically contentious. it would be a different story if the protocol were designed that way from the start.

i'm sure we'll eventually fork to a quantum resistant signature scheme but the fork won't do anything to stop vulnerable coins from being spent. those coins will eventually be stolen over time.

And I don't think it will be this fast. When there were first Moon landings people were saying that a colonization of the Moon is just a few years ahead of us and then we will launch missions to other planets of the Solar System. We are decades later and there are no Moon bases or manned missions to Mars.

Many years will pass between the first prototype and a fully functioning quantum computer.

It seems to me that lately humanity has already been at the peak of its mental abilities.  Even if a good result in the field of quantum technologies is achieved and a quantum computer is created, then in the coming decades this technology will be practically absent for a wider start, because it is still a very expensive thing.

If you keep those coins locked or something else what changes the original supply, you will create another sh**coin fork.

The original chain will always remain the main chain with all the mined coins. Bitcoin is a challenge network. There will be a quantum update. But whoever moves the coins with no owner from the old to the new addresses will be the new owners. That is what original Bitcoin is. That makes the community improve the network.


SHA-256 is not a quantum issue but to have an example:



Thereafter we would have two chains. The original chain and a forked one. To avoid such situations the Bitcoin community has to have an updated network all the time. That is the challenge.

The quantum update will mark the new beginning of Bitcoin as the lost coins will be active again.

Actually once you soft fork to add the quantum resistant code, you might also add something to keep those coins locked forever. Something along the lines of: By the date the new code activates, coins not moved to a new wallet that supports it become locked. You can wait a year or four (next halving), etc. to give people plenty of time... Well we will see what core brings regarding this matter.

Do you even understand what quantum computing is and why we don't already have it? Quantum computing components need very energy intensive environments to even exist. I can give you an entire class on Q-bits and sub zero containment but all that would seem like a moot thing to do who thinks quantum computers would be invented to play games and mine or attack Bitcoins... that is so trivial.

If a quantum computer is to appear in 10 years, then certainly Bitcoin will also be upgraded to be able to counteract that effect.  I wonder if quantum computers really threaten the existence of Bitcoin.  It has never happened and I think quantum computers will help exploit many times faster, the Bitcoin network will be stronger.

At the beginning bitcoin used pay to public key (P2PK) instead of the pay to public key hash (P2PKH) that we are using now.
When using P2PK the public key is published in the blockchain when the "address" receives coins.

Actually. without QC, the P2PK  is even safer than P2PKH, because there is only ONE valid private key that can be used to spend coins from P2PK, while there are 2^96=79228162514264337593543950336 valid private keys to all P2PKH addresses. Because of the Ripemod160 hash.

I do not know any wallet that would still support paying to P2PK "addresses", but there are some scripts in the net that can still be used for creating  P2PK "addresses"

That's quite interesting, I didn't know that. I couldn't find anything useful on Google, got any more info on that? How are the public keys to Satoshi's old stash known, where public keys public before the protocol was changed to the way it works now?

You forgot Satoshi's 1000000 bitcoins that have newer been moved, but still have their public keys visible.

Those addresses are difficult to protect from QC, because even if we implement a QC-resistant algorithm, those can't be protected or otherwise even Satoshi couldn't move them.

A quantum computer, a calculating machine that utilizes quantum physics in the calculation process. This machine is predicted to have capabilities that far exceed the computers we use today. Computers that we often use now provide so many benefits that our parents might not be able to imagine. We can use this "classic" computer for simple things like calculating the price of groceries, making school assignments, communicating through social media, and discussing our faces and voices through the artificial intelligence they have. The unimaginable benefits will be realized in the future by the realization of quantum computers. With quantum computers, it is hoped that super-complicated calculations will require very large numbers to be done. Pharmacologists can count every atom in a drug that can fight viruses quickly and accurately to produce drugs that are more effective against disease. You might not use a quantum computer to update the status of social media, because that means the function of a quantum computer will be redundant. But, pharmacologists, physicists, chemists, and computer scientists will be greatly helped by the existence of quantum computers. More innovations that will benefit humanity will be generated from their calculations using quantum computers.

The rate of our evolution will probably keep increasing with technological advancements like Quantum computers, cold fusion plants, Artificial Intelligence and Robotics.

I am just sad that I'll probably won't have enough time to enjoy a future of humanity uniting and prospering, with space exploration becoming our main target.

So there is not much point in discussing Bitcoin along with Quantum computers. I was about to type that I doubt it will be still relevant, but I'm afraid that after 10 years someone will reply to this post about how dumb I was 

Well the fear is quantum computers can crack classic crypto, but there is a catch: There will be quantum crypto, so things go back to the same again. There is a transitional moment where a select few would have the massive early quantum computers (remember the old computers) but as with everything, technology gets mass produced and cheaper and will find its way to everyone's hand, and at that point quantum crypto will be common.

In the meantime there ARE quantum resistant crypto algorithms, and one of those is proposed for soft-forking Bitcoin way before this ever becomes an issue.

More than "replacing" i think quantum will become an add on, i think at some point there will be quantum co-processors available. There are things general computing can do better than quantum, and vice-versa. I imagine a century later the same cpu will have both things integrated.

Right now a 7qubit computer is several stories tall so, no, not quite there yet

But there are reported experiments with around 50qubits, a general quantum computer is yet to be built (publicly). I can imagine the NSA will build and operate one secretly so they can spy everyone's encrypted communications for a while until the technology reaches the masses. So its back to a 60ies style era where the State (and others) can and will spy on you until computers got good and small enough for common people to use cryptography.