I wonder what would happen to the price of Bitcoin once quantum computer technology advances. I suppose quantum miners would plummet the markets to the ground? It might take a while for Bitcoin to recover from that one... If it ever does...
Edit: Although by that point we would probably have only a small amount left to mine so it would not matter maybe.
google's new toy is a simple RNG generator. so yeah, designing a quantum computer that would serve as a universal decryptor is going to take a long time. sure it's possible that such a machine will emerge in the future, but then it's not just BTC and other crypto that's in jeopardy.Edit: Although by that point we would probably have only a small amount left to mine so it would not matter maybe.
all existing encryption will be just as useless, including all banking systems, and the whole internet as it is now. no SSL certificates, no e-mail passwords, no safe military communications. whole industry sectors would be wiped out, all existing financial and military protections useless. this scenario is obviously infeasible, and it should be obvious that when quantum computing advances to a point where it's able to make all our encryption systems useless, it will at the same time provide encryption algorithms that will be just as hard for quantum computers to break as our contemporary encryption is tough to break for computers that we're using now. other security measures would also appear that will exploit some kind of fundamental weakness in quantum computing, introduce sufficiently hardened encryption, or alternative security measures.
computer security is an endless arms race. just keep your keys safe, update when needed, and you're going to be fine now, in the present, as well as in the foreseeable future.
social engineering is a always a primary attack vector anyway, and no advances in technology are going to change that.
TLDR: when quantum computers are good enough to break encryption, just update your wallet and follow on-screen prompts.
