5 ms·

In any case bitcoin will not survive the breaking of sha256 and this will happen in less than 10 years.

by satellite2 5y ago

0xdeadb00f 5y ago
Can't wait!
threshold 5y ago
^this
nly 5y ago
The security of Bitcoin doesn't depend on SHA256 the way you think it does.
robbedpeter 5y ago
Sha256 will be replaced, but even if it's cracked before a replacement, there are alternatives ready to be deployed with a fork. It'd be ugly but not lethal. Changing the hashing functions, encryption, and network verification are all built into bitcoin. It's designed to be resilient, and to use consensus when adapting over time. It'd be really stupid for people to go "oh no, someone cracked sha256 and mined a million blocks, I guess we're done with bitcoin now. Buh-bye money!" They'll fix it in the case of a noticeable exploit. If someone were clever, they'd mine blocks surreptitiously, sufficiently spaced out over time and different networks so that it looks like normal mining. They could get a few blocks per day for maybe a couple years until the upgrades. The impact to the system would be minimal.
- satellite2 5y ago
  I doubt it. The Bitcoin ecosystem is weakly organised and governed, which is an advantage in some regard but has also been shown to lead to the incapacity to make decisions. On top of that, most of the ecosystem is built on specialized hardware that is designed to compute sha256 specifically and that cannot be swapped.
mkj 5y ago
Got details on how sha256 is broken?
- satellite2 5y ago
  It's not. Currently no weakness has been found on sha-2 (publicly at least). My 10 years prediction is based on a heuristic, the constatation that a generation of cryptographic functions tend to last 20-30 years.
  - throwaway248329 5y ago
    Shouldn't the use of double hashing also delay it? Bitcoin blocks are hashed as SHA256(SHA256(x)).
chki 5y ago
I wonder: if somebody would silently break sha256 and was able to mine an almost arbitrary amount of Bitcoin would it be unethical to do so? (Or illegal, which would probably depend on the jurisdiction) I feel like it would be slightly unethical but on the other hand you're not really defrauding anybody. You did actually produce those blocks, not by improving your calculator but by using some other method.
- zikduruqe 5y ago
  I mean every single private key in existence is already on the internet. Have fun raking in those free bitcoins. https://keys.lol/bitcoin https://keys.lol/bitcoin
lowkey 5y ago
If and when sha256 is broken, the internet breaks, period. It will be a Y2K-like event across the world. Every single banking website would be vulnerable. The Bitcoin core devs have been thinking about the failure modes of hash algorithms since Satoshi. If you are betting against Bitcoin primarily because you believe it will fail when sha256 inevitably falls, you are missing the bigger picture and underestimating the resilience of the Bitcoin developers and broader community.

In any case bitcoin will not survive the breaking of sha256 and this will happen in less than 10 years.

0xdeadb00f 5y ago

Can't wait!

threshold 5y ago

^this

nly 5y ago

The security of Bitcoin doesn't depend on SHA256 the way you think it does.

robbedpeter 5y ago

Sha256 will be replaced, but even if it's cracked before a replacement, there are alternatives ready to be deployed with a fork. It'd be ugly but not lethal. Changing the hashing functions, encryption, and network verification are all built into bitcoin. It's designed to be resilient, and to use consensus when adapting over time. It'd be really stupid for people to go "oh no, someone cracked sha256 and mined a million blocks, I guess we're done with bitcoin now. Buh-bye money!" They'll fix it in the case of a noticeable exploit. If someone were clever, they'd mine blocks surreptitiously, sufficiently spaced out over time and different networks so that it looks like normal mining. They could get a few blocks per day for maybe a couple years until the upgrades. The impact to the system would be minimal.

satellite2 5y ago
I doubt it. The Bitcoin ecosystem is weakly organised and governed, which is an advantage in some regard but has also been shown to lead to the incapacity to make decisions. On top of that, most of the ecosystem is built on specialized hardware that is designed to compute sha256 specifically and that cannot be swapped.

mkj 5y ago

Got details on how sha256 is broken?

satellite2 5y ago
It's not. Currently no weakness has been found on sha-2 (publicly at least). My 10 years prediction is based on a heuristic, the constatation that a generation of cryptographic functions tend to last 20-30 years.
- throwaway248329 5y ago
  Shouldn't the use of double hashing also delay it? Bitcoin blocks are hashed as SHA256(SHA256(x)).

chki 5y ago

I wonder: if somebody would silently break sha256 and was able to mine an almost arbitrary amount of Bitcoin would it be unethical to do so? (Or illegal, which would probably depend on the jurisdiction) I feel like it would be slightly unethical but on the other hand you're not really defrauding anybody. You did actually produce those blocks, not by improving your calculator but by using some other method.

zikduruqe 5y ago
I mean every single private key in existence is already on the internet. Have fun raking in those free bitcoins. https://keys.lol/bitcoin https://keys.lol/bitcoin

lowkey 5y ago

If and when sha256 is broken, the internet breaks, period. It will be a Y2K-like event across the world. Every single banking website would be vulnerable. The Bitcoin core devs have been thinking about the failure modes of hash algorithms since Satoshi. If you are betting against Bitcoin primarily because you believe it will fail when sha256 inevitably falls, you are missing the bigger picture and underestimating the resilience of the Bitcoin developers and broader community.