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Everyone wants to talk about the future of crypto in terms of how it can be used. Not enough people are talking about the fact that a single breakthrough in com

Everyone wants to talk about the future of crypto in terms of how it can be used. Not enough people are talking about the fact that a single breakthrough in computing could undo the encryption that these currencies are reliant upon, instantly driving the value to zero. This is a vulnerability that does not have an analogue in any other currencies, securities or stores of wealth. Because of that, crypto is and will be an extremely high-risk asset to hold. It’s a time bomb. Like all things of this nature, everyone will ignore it until it happens, which means that crypto will be incorrectly priced by markets until then.

DethNinja 5y ago
I don’t get this argument especially here in the hackernews; 1. If they can crack the cryptocurrencies then it means that they can easily crack crypto of online banking systems as well, entire world would crash regardless of whichever asset you hold. 2. There are already quantum resistant crypto algorithms, crypto currencies can easily switch to them once it is clear that current crypto algorithms can be cracked. It would mean that people who did transactions between the detection period would probably lose their money but it wouldn’t be the end of crypto currencies.
- dehrmann 5y ago
  > If they can crack the cryptocurrencies then it means that they can easily crack crypto of online banking systems as well They're very different because the blockchain is public. Getting access to a bank's database touches a lot more systems and algorithms. Even something less interesting like intercepting web traffic to (or between) banks isn't interesting because you need physical access to the medium and you'd need a hole in TLS. Like Bitcoin, TLS uses SHA-256, but breaking it probably doesn't give you access to any plaintext, and you could force a downgrade to TLS 1.2 to use MD5-SHA-1. This is only per-connection; the Bitcoin ledger is set in stone.
- xwolfi 5y ago
  Well hacking a bank doesn't give legal value to your transfer order, a simple employee could revert by calling the target bank on the phone under threat of pursuit if no reversal. Bank account are not protected by cryptography, they're protected by law. What you want is bitcoin to have the same, not say that since a banks' https website could be hacked, let's do nothing about the main weakness of crypto. But anyway the point is moot: it's certain developers would upgrade the network with time as new events unfold.
ashtonkem 5y ago
I’m extremely bearish on Crypto, but I don’t think this is a fair criticism of it. If someone manages to break the crypto underpinning say, Bitcoin, then the crash in Bitcoin prices would be the least of our problems as a society. The sudden, catastrophic collapse of all online commerce would probably be a bigger problem, as would the immediate halting of electronic interbank communication.
- xwolfi 5y ago
  I mean we survived before online commerce, I remember it vividly even. Can bitcoin survive without crypto ? There was even a time, believe it or not, where electricity didn't exist and people/society still kinda worked... When classical crypto is reverse (when, not if), then we'll simply have all our past secrets revealed. What you want is gradual increase in complexity so that the decyphered past only impact dead people. Crypto currency will ofc do that too, don't forget bitcoin can change everything, even its 21M limit, as long as the majority of the network follows.
  - ashtonkem 5y ago
    There is a big, big difference between “we survived before online commerce” and “you’re going back to a pre 1990s economy tomorrow”.
anonporridge 5y ago
This is such a fucking lazy criticism for a supposedly technically literate community. https://en.bitcoin.it/wiki/Quantum_computing_and_Bitcoin#Mitigations https://en.bitcoin.it/wiki/Quantum_computing_and_Bitcoin#Mit...
- deleted 5y ago
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dehrmann 5y ago
At least with Bitcoin, I'd worry more about systemic risks (China controls most of the miners) than risks in particular algorithms. That said, while SHA-256 has a lot of accumulated knowledge about hash functions in it and has had a lot of eyeballs on it over the years, it hasn't had such a big bounty on it, yet.
Ar-Curunir 5y ago
lmao wtf? The same argument applies to the entire Internet. The cryptography used in most reputable blockchains (eg Bitcoin, Ethereum, etc) is not significantly different from cryptography used in TLS. If you break the cryptography in cryptocurrencies, you're probably also breaking secure web browsing as implemented everywhere today.

DethNinja 5y ago

I don’t get this argument especially here in the hackernews; 1. If they can crack the cryptocurrencies then it means that they can easily crack crypto of online banking systems as well, entire world would crash regardless of whichever asset you hold. 2. There are already quantum resistant crypto algorithms, crypto currencies can easily switch to them once it is clear that current crypto algorithms can be cracked. It would mean that people who did transactions between the detection period would probably lose their money but it wouldn’t be the end of crypto currencies.

dehrmann 5y ago
> If they can crack the cryptocurrencies then it means that they can easily crack crypto of online banking systems as well They're very different because the blockchain is public. Getting access to a bank's database touches a lot more systems and algorithms. Even something less interesting like intercepting web traffic to (or between) banks isn't interesting because you need physical access to the medium and you'd need a hole in TLS. Like Bitcoin, TLS uses SHA-256, but breaking it probably doesn't give you access to any plaintext, and you could force a downgrade to TLS 1.2 to use MD5-SHA-1. This is only per-connection; the Bitcoin ledger is set in stone.
xwolfi 5y ago
Well hacking a bank doesn't give legal value to your transfer order, a simple employee could revert by calling the target bank on the phone under threat of pursuit if no reversal. Bank account are not protected by cryptography, they're protected by law. What you want is bitcoin to have the same, not say that since a banks' https website could be hacked, let's do nothing about the main weakness of crypto. But anyway the point is moot: it's certain developers would upgrade the network with time as new events unfold.

ashtonkem 5y ago

I’m extremely bearish on Crypto, but I don’t think this is a fair criticism of it. If someone manages to break the crypto underpinning say, Bitcoin, then the crash in Bitcoin prices would be the least of our problems as a society. The sudden, catastrophic collapse of all online commerce would probably be a bigger problem, as would the immediate halting of electronic interbank communication.

xwolfi 5y ago
I mean we survived before online commerce, I remember it vividly even. Can bitcoin survive without crypto ? There was even a time, believe it or not, where electricity didn't exist and people/society still kinda worked... When classical crypto is reverse (when, not if), then we'll simply have all our past secrets revealed. What you want is gradual increase in complexity so that the decyphered past only impact dead people. Crypto currency will ofc do that too, don't forget bitcoin can change everything, even its 21M limit, as long as the majority of the network follows.
- ashtonkem 5y ago
  There is a big, big difference between “we survived before online commerce” and “you’re going back to a pre 1990s economy tomorrow”.

anonporridge 5y ago

This is such a fucking lazy criticism for a supposedly technically literate community. https://en.bitcoin.it/wiki/Quantum_computing_and_Bitcoin#Mitigations https://en.bitcoin.it/wiki/Quantum_computing_and_Bitcoin#Mit...

deleted 5y ago
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dehrmann 5y ago

At least with Bitcoin, I'd worry more about systemic risks (China controls most of the miners) than risks in particular algorithms. That said, while SHA-256 has a lot of accumulated knowledge about hash functions in it and has had a lot of eyeballs on it over the years, it hasn't had such a big bounty on it, yet.

Ar-Curunir 5y ago

lmao wtf? The same argument applies to the entire Internet. The cryptography used in most reputable blockchains (eg Bitcoin, Ethereum, etc) is not significantly different from cryptography used in TLS. If you break the cryptography in cryptocurrencies, you're probably also breaking secure web browsing as implemented everywhere today.