Quantum Computing threat to Bitcoin or cryptocurrencies in general.

Xavofat

hero member

Activity: 938

Merit: 559

Did you see that ludicrous display last night?

It'll probably take a good 20 years or so before a general purpose quantum computer that is capable of breaking Bitcoin's public key cryptography.

When/if this level of quantum computing is reached, it's not just Bitcoin which will have to update. Loads of things use encryption - here is a somewhat hyperbolic article on the subject.

Anyway, when/if this happens there can be a soft fork to a new address type with a different public key algorithm, as mentioned on Bitcoin Wiki.

Quote from: v_Harley on March 18, 2018, 09:45:26 AM

according to the BTC algorithm, the quantum computer can't attack BTC.

What are you on about?

v_Harley

member

Activity: 129

Merit: 10

Quantum computers don't attack BTC because it doesn't make any sense. And according to the BTC algorithm, the quantum computer can't attack BTC.

cryptorTUX

member

Activity: 238

Merit: 11

You see if we ever come close to making quantum computer bitcoin will have an update, it will be patched in a way to enable much longer and larger public and private keys relationships between them and thus addresses will become longer. But then it will be quantum resistant because you will raise the difficulty to guess randomly keys to much higher level which will make it more secure in the long run. However bad side is because people who lost their coins or who don't switch to new addresses risk of their bitcoins to be used by somebody else. Imagine if this happens and we all move to this new standard and then some guys comes and with the help of quantum computer he finds coins that satoshi nakamoto himself had and thus becomes rich. So we can avoid the problem by implementing different addresses but will leave rest of people who don't switch the possibility of their coins being compromised.

No matter if we are decentralized, I think another split might occur if some people don't want to switch but mostly and majority will want to switch because this is the best we can do to ensure security over our funds.

dimasinteger

newbie

Activity: 20

Merit: 1

Hi All,

If the Elliptic curve cryptography used in bitcoin and other cryptos are much stronger than RSA encryption, what is the probability of getting that cracked by Quantum Computing?

As far as I know the strength of 256 bit keys pair of ECC are equal to RSA 3072 bit key.

If the RSA 1024 bit key is crackable (link below)
https://thehackernews.com/2017/07/gnupg-libgcrypt-rsa-encryption.html

what are the chances of getting both RSA 3072 and ECC 256 cracked by quantum computing? lets say in 20 years time, and how would BTC cope with such a thing? increase the length of encryption? and if yes, is not this hard due to the fact that it's decentralized?

Topic: Quantum Computing threat to Bitcoin or cryptocurrencies in general. (Read 148 times)