3 ms·

Won't bitcoin be due for a bit of a drop one quantum computers unlock some percent of the wallets. https://decrypt.co/28560/quantum-computers-could-crack-bitco

by mdale 6y ago

Won't bitcoin be due for a bit of a drop one quantum computers unlock some percent of the wallets. https://decrypt.co/28560/quantum-computers-could-crack-bitcoins-encryption-by-2022?amp=1 https://decrypt.co/28560/quantum-computers-could-crack-bitco...

asdf333 6y ago
yes if that happens bitcoin is over. but having said that it doesn't seem like it'll happen soon.
- rafale 6y ago
  Not just Bitcoin. Traditional banking, SSL, everything. Also the crypto used in the above will be upgraded to quantum proof algorithms before then. The math is already known.
kinghajj 6y ago
"With Bitcoin, a private key, picked at random, is run through these algorithms to generate a public key. And the Bitcoin protocol uses the hash value of this to create a public Bitcoin address. A quantum computer could reverse this process and derive the private key from a public one. And voila! Bitcoin’s claim of inviolability and unhackability is gone, and you have access to any Bitcoin wallet you want." This is both right and completely wrong at the same time. It does mention that addresses are hashes of the public key, but then goes on to the unjustified leap that quantum computers would let you access "any Bitcoin wallet you want." That's absolutely false: addresses which have received Bitcoins but never sent them have not revealed their corresponding public key. There's no technique I'm aware of that would let a quantum computer efficiently invert the hash to find the public key. Most Bitcoin wallets are configured such that each time you send bitcoins to someone, the "change" of the transaction goes to a different address. The risk comes from when a single address is re-used multiple times for multiple transactions, and has sent those proceeds to other addresses. Such multi-use addresses have revealed their public keys, and thus would be susceptible to a quantum computing attack. This is way, though, the advice since the inception of Bitcoin has been never to re-use addresses in this way, but instead always to generate new ones as needed.

by mdale 6y ago

asdf333 6y ago

yes if that happens bitcoin is over. but having said that it doesn't seem like it'll happen soon.

rafale 6y ago
Not just Bitcoin. Traditional banking, SSL, everything. Also the crypto used in the above will be upgraded to quantum proof algorithms before then. The math is already known.

kinghajj 6y ago

"With Bitcoin, a private key, picked at random, is run through these algorithms to generate a public key. And the Bitcoin protocol uses the hash value of this to create a public Bitcoin address. A quantum computer could reverse this process and derive the private key from a public one. And voila! Bitcoin’s claim of inviolability and unhackability is gone, and you have access to any Bitcoin wallet you want." This is both right and completely wrong at the same time. It does mention that addresses are hashes of the public key, but then goes on to the unjustified leap that quantum computers would let you access "any Bitcoin wallet you want." That's absolutely false: addresses which have received Bitcoins but never sent them have not revealed their corresponding public key. There's no technique I'm aware of that would let a quantum computer efficiently invert the hash to find the public key. Most Bitcoin wallets are configured such that each time you send bitcoins to someone, the "change" of the transaction goes to a different address. The risk comes from when a single address is re-used multiple times for multiple transactions, and has sent those proceeds to other addresses. Such multi-use addresses have revealed their public keys, and thus would be susceptible to a quantum computing attack. This is way, though, the advice since the inception of Bitcoin has been never to re-use addresses in this way, but instead always to generate new ones as needed.