Bitcoin is relatively safe; there's Glover's Algorithm [1] which would effectively turn computing sha-256 hashes into computing sha-128 hashes (so I read somewh

Bitcoin is relatively safe; there's Glover's Algorithm [1] which would effectively turn computing sha-256 hashes into computing sha-128 hashes (so I read somewhere) which is a problem, but not an impossible one. The majority of the miners plus core devs can agree to upgrade the protocol to use a different hash algorithm, like scrypt (which Litecoin uses) or something specifically made that's not vulnerable to quantum algorithms. (I don't know if scrypt is.) This upgrade wouldn't need to happen overnight, either. I bet the first quantum computer that can compute sha-256 hashes at all will do so slower than the latest classical ASICs of the time. [1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Grover%27s_algorithm http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Grover%27s_algorithm