3 ms·
With the current compute density of Bitcoin (which now runs mostly on purpose-built hardware) it'd still take longer than the universe has existed to find even
by _cenw 2y ago
With the current compute density of Bitcoin (which now runs mostly on purpose-built hardware) it'd still take longer than the universe has existed to find even one collision and the actual process of computing SHA256 is simple enough that we're not likely to find a shortcut.
- jandrewrogers 2y agoI think you missed the “broken” part. A lot of simple cryptographic hash functions have been broken. There is a community of people with some semblance of credibility that believe it is just a matter of time for SHA-256. The creation of SHA-3 wasn’t entirely for no reason. I’m not saying it will happen but it is plausible. The question is what is the effect of that happening to bitcoin.
- adastra22 2y agoWho? I don’t know any cryptographers that think this anymore.
- UltraSane 2y agoBroken in this context means being able to determine the input nonce that generates a hash with enough leading zeros to mine a bitcoin block with much less energy and time than brute forcing random nonces does now. Then you could mine bitcoin blocks with no power expense and always be first. You would have to be careful about how many blocks you mine to not make people suspicious.