Topic: The bubble has popped, slow decline to $3 on the way - page 3. (Read 11236 times)

Nonono, panic, and sell your bitcoins to me for higher than what I predict them to fall to!

Now, before the quantum discussion goes out of hand.


I guess I'll give it a try. It's really not quite possible to explain quantum mechanics with classical analogies though, so just accept that reality is... different with QM. For example, working on a superposition of all return values of a function, what you call "ALL answers", is not the same as working on all return values of a classical function. You don't actually get all of them, they're just... partially there, for the lack of a better expression.

The information contained in a qubit is infinite because its state space is, for all we know, infinitely large. However, you cannot extract more than one bit of information when you read a qubit to get an actual answer! Also, reading a qubit destroys its state! So the trick lies in transformations done on the information in the system's quantum mechanical state space, before you read out the answer.

In fact, it is very complicated and counter-intuitive to write algorithms for quantum computation devices. For all I know, we know about three useful algorithms. Granted, two of them are real breakthroughs: you can search an item in an unsorted list in sqrt(N) complexity (yes, this should sound absolutely impossible if you think about it) and decompose numbers into their prime factors in polynomial complexity! The latter is called Shor's Algorithm.

With one qubit alone, you can do almost nothing. If you have one unitary transform on it, you get a great random bit generator, which can come in handy, but is absolutely useless to break Bitcoin. To actually break Bitcoin, you need Shor's Algorithm, and that means you need to operate on qubit-strings large enough to perform calculations with Bitcoin's keys! I don't know the exact requirements, but it's really really really far off from where we stand. Remember people managed something like 4 qubits and factoring 15 or something.

Here's how a group did that: http://arxiv.org/abs/0705.1398

Note that this is nowhere near what a normal person imagines as a computer. We're talking enormous absurd setups creating interference patterns in cold vacuum chambers. To factor the number 15. Yes, it's 3*5, duh, and this implementation scales horribly.

It's really interesting to think about quantum computation, but don't panic too much about it. If someone shouts "heureka" and cracks Bitcoin-size keys, it might as well be a mathematician or whoever found something everyone else overlooked. If anything, be afraid of C++, which is a sloppy language in terms of security yet used for the main Bitcoin client. A simple bug in a compiler might turn out as fatal as one in the Bitcoin source, and I hope you remember how often Bitcoin already had dangerous problems of the kind. Billions of Bitcoins, baby! Been there, done that.

TL;DR: DON'T PANIC!

Not enough citations, people with experience please chime in. According to that no bubble may exist, could just be an uptrend.

Link plz?

I don't think we can really disagree with your sentiments. And doens't the NSA just wish that were true. But, let's reel in the FTL travel a bit to something more achievable.
FTL communications. As corny as this may sound the best place I know of to read up on the conept of FTL communications is from EVEonline.com  for the space based mmo video game.

 Very much sci-fi but an intriguing idea none the less; "The roots of the solution lay in an ancient paradox, often called the EPR paradox, the name shrouded in mystery. The EPR paradox is famous for contradicting quantum physics in some very important ways. Specifically it shows another old physic theory, the Heisenberg Uncertainty Principle, to be untrue. The Heisenberg Uncertainty Principle, believed to be named after a place or a person, affirms that the exact state of quantum particle cannot be determined with full accuracy, no matter how refined the measurement equipment is. The classical example being the measurement of the velocity and position of a free particle: to be able to measure the position of a particle you must be able to 'see' it. This means that you have to illuminate it at least with one photon. But the collision between the photon and the particle changes the velocity of the particle, thus making it impossible to determine what the velocity was before the position was measured."
http://community.eveonline.com/background/communication/
http://community.eveonline.com/background/communication/comm_02.asp

edit; some real literature on EPR paradox - http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/qt-epr/

edit; @ OP - $6.55

File me among the amused. For my part, I've studied computer science and cryptography, and while quantum computing could radically alter the landscape of computers and encryption algorithms, I file it in the same category as FTL (Faster Than Light) travel: pure science fiction, at least for now. I figure if someone figures out how to make a true quantum computer, they'll probably also be the ones to create an FTL drive. Even better "proof" that quantum computing is nowhere near being ready for actual use: Dan Brown wrote about it in his (horrible) techno-thriller Digital Fortress. The NSA already has a giant supercomputer that uses superconducting quantum computing chips to crack all encryption codes everywhere!

Anything is possible in the world of quantum physics... even growing during a steady decline 

True, no logic could stand up to an infographic. 

The funny thing is that that there is no such thing as a financial expert, IMO. Even the very best of the best on Wall St. just barely do better than random chance. This has been studied extensively.  Personally I have made most of my real money in the stock market betting against the common wisdom and going with my gut + fundamentals. Using that I liquidated just before the tech bubble crash and again just before the current global collapse.
 I thank Laurie Anderson. I saw her in concert one night in '08 and a "sell" light went off in my head. Here is the song that did it, enjoy:  http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bvhfSH9CbCw   

She is awesome!

Don't mock the flawless speculation of the expert speculators on the speculation board.  They have charts with MS Paint lines drawn on them to back them up.

Wow, this is a slow decline. We are up more than 10% at the moment. I'm no math whiz, how long will it take to get to $3 at 10% growth?

rock on. *runs off to read http://qbnets.wordpress.com/2010/01/06/grovers-algorithm-for-dummies/




edit; oh OP, $6.49

Rofl. That is all. Carry on.

It's like the Hitch is back from the dead, I tell you!

I for one am amused.

Oh, and the joint could use a little Karl Popper in hi free time.

Quite so; argumentum ad logicam is the fallacious argument that because a conclusion is the end of a chain of bad logic that makes it wrong.  Of course it doesn't.  I might say "apples fall from trees because fairies cut their stalks". Apples definitely do fall from trees.  That doesn't mean fairies cut them down though (to conclude so would be to commit another logic error, affirmation of the consequent, and I already know you're familiar with that one... "if QC then No Evidence; No Evidence therefore QC").

However, what we're arguing about here is whether your logic is fallacious or not.  Your straw man was to insert a load of conclusions about my opinion on extraterrestrials into my mouth then demolish (using your own special brand of logic) what you had inserted.  That is the textbook definition of a straw man.  A straw man is proof of nothing, and is without doubt a fallacious argument.  Hence why I chose to not enter into debate with you about things I did not say.

None of that changes the fact that you resorted to use of a straw man to protect your wibble about advanced quantum computers being real.


Yes; I can quite see that is a waste of time.  However, it amuses me, and perhaps it amuses some others reading.


Seriously?  Your defence now is that you weren't debating whether your belief was true or not; you were debating whether it's true that you hold it.  Let me save you the trouble: I'm quite sure you believe your own beliefs.  There is no externally observable source that any of us can use to prove or disprove what thoughts are in your head, so I am happy to believe your evidence in that respect.

You seem to have shifted your ground though; the debate was not "does the joint believe advanced quantum computers are real?", the debate was "are advanced quantum computers real?".  Here's the evidence for that being exactly what the debate was:


You chose to slap down Hexadecibal with your superior knowledge of what quantum computers are doing in secret.

Now you're telling us that what you were actually doing was parading your beliefs, not knowledge.  You have no knowledge of any advanced quantum computer; you have not designed one, you have not seen one; you have not heard reports of one; you can't even point to some evidence of a problem that one might have solved, revealing itself to us.  You offer "belief" as your justification for condescendingly telling Hexadecibal how deluded he was.  Why does your belief that they exist trump his/our belief that they don't?  Your belief is better than his, right?

That is simply religious bigotry.

Oh... sorry, I "believe" that it's religious bigotry.  Using your own logic then, my position is unimpeachable, so I expect nothing but silence from you in response save you be branded a hypocrite (he says expecting no such thing).

Very well could be.

There's no known quantum algorithm that makes breaking SHA-2 non-exponential in the digest size. Grover's algorithm only gives bits/2 complexity for preimage attacks, and bits/3 complexity for collision attacks.

Like I said before, the danger isn't to the hash algorithm. It's to the transaction algorithm. And you only need to break one private key to get all the coins at a particular address.

I'm reasonably certain that this is incorrect, and that, more specifically, to find a 256-bit solution you need a 256-qubit quantum computer.

oh, good

Nope.  The Remulaks bought some with their intergalactic morzorks.

So Bitcoin isn't $3 yet.

You got me.  No really.  You did.