I know the military can't break the laws of physics and I know you have no idea the scale you are talking about. We aren't talking about "wow this GPU is 3x as fast as last years" we are talking about energy usage on the scale of sending an intersteller spacecraft to another star system to begin a human colony.
At the thermodynamic limit (the limit of efficiency in storing information imposed by the laws of the universe) it would require an amount of energy more than 100,000 times greater than the global energy usage of the entire human last year just to count to 2^160. 160 bit can't be brute forced today, tomorrow, next century, and likely not anytime until material sciences become so advanced that they will threaten what you propose we upgrade to as well.
Given that k = 1.38×10-16 erg/°Kelvin, and that the ambient temperature of the universe is 3.2°Kelvin, an ideal computer running at 3.2°K would consume 4.4×10-16ergs every time it set or cleared a bit. To run a computer any colder than the cosmic background radiation would require extra energy to run a heat pump.
To count to 2^160 (just count 1,2,3 ... 2^160) using a perfect computer would require 6.43x10^32 ergs. To convert to a unit of power which is better known that is 1.78x10^16 kWh. A next generation nuclear reactor (1500 MW, 90% capacity factor) can produce 4.257*10^13 kWh annually. That means even if magical aliens gave us a perfect computer it would require ~420,000 reactor years to produce the energy necessary for it to count from 0 to 2^160. Remember this is merely counting to the number 2^160. To perform a brute force attack would require tens of thousands of operations per attempt.
So lets ballpark it to say ~50,000 brand new nuclear reactors constructed and running continually to power nothing but this non-existent alien tech perfect computer for the next 10,000 years .... and it would still only have less than a 10% chance of brute forcing a Bitcoin address.So yes I know 160 bit keys won't be brute forced in the next 20 years.
This quote applies to 256 bit keys but to a lesser extent it applies to 160bit hashes as well.
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.
http://www.schneier.com/blog/archives/2009/09/the_doghouse_cr.html+2^160
Are you sure this calculations are correct ?
Also, does "other currencies" contain gold & silver bullions + diamonds ?
Even if these calculations are correct then we have roughly 5,000,000,000,000,000 (5 quadrillions in US scale or 5 trillions in normal scale) units of dollars in circulation. If you add 2 more zeros for penny, then we have
=5,000,000,000,000,000,00 units of dollars vs
21,000,000,000,000,000 units of bitcoin
So no, as you can see - it isn't enough.
At least 2 zeros (or better 3) are missing from this picture.
FYI, the fed does publish reports...
http://www.federalreserve.gov/releases/h6/20121108/Look over here ----->
Thousand = 1,000
Million = 1,000,000
Billion = 1,000,000,000
Trillion = 1,000,000,000,000
USA M1 (9/12) = 2,352,600,000,000
USA M2 (9/12) = 10,126,800,000,000
Quadrillion = 1,000,000,000,000,000
Satoshis = 2,100,000,000,000,000
There are
NOT 5 Quadrillion Dollars, try again.
