As the title say. I appreciate that it can take years or decades to perfect QC, but it’s going to happen and it’s just a matter of when more than if. While encryption can be updated to be ‘quantum safe’ cryptos are really exposed and, afaik, there is no crypto or blockchain that is really quantum ready. Why people keep throwing money at Bitcoin then?
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Well most people are throwing money in bitcoin to use it for the typical things you’d use bitcoin for (buying things online anonymously, hoping its worth will go up, etc).
Crypto is one part of it, the question can really be asked for anyplace that isn’t using quantum resistant encryption. Thats why there’s a big push now to be quantum safe, so that by 10 years time most things will be before QC can affect it.
Interesting video on QC about changing encryption now: [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=x3qeyffEC70](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=x3qeyffEC70)
And a specific podcast about QC and Crypto: [https://youtu.be/6oUAUGkdlxs?si=R87sGidvrvYD2GgU](https://youtu.be/6oUAUGkdlxs?si=R87sGidvrvYD2GgU)
Etherum roadmap on quantum resistance: [https://ethereum.org/en/roadmap/future-proofing/](https://ethereum.org/en/roadmap/future-proofing/)
Answer to OP’s question:
Greater fool theory.
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>quantum resistant encryption
The term you’re looking for is post-quantum encryption
It’s just one of those Youtube videos with insane cuts with no pauses at all. Totally unwatchable.
Why has this type of editing become a thing?
A good speaker knows that pauses are among the most important things!
having done some work in both, there’s a general feeling that our ability to make crypto safe from quantum is much greater than our ability to make scalable quantum computers
This is the answer.
To go slightly deeper, crypto algorithms can evolve. So if Bitcoin thought they needed to make it quantum-proof, they could make that change to the code and spec, with limited time-boxed backward compatibility to allow a seamless transition.
I like how the top comment is shitting on the concept of crypto and not really answering the question at all by OP.
Personally I don’t invest in it. It’s too speculative and I think actual productive assets will substantially outperform. But I potentially see use cases for people living in oppressive regimes with poor control of fiat.
Blockchains feeding verifiable data to AI models may be more productive than the internet was.
top comment sounds like the average no-coiner uneducated fudder…dont worry he’ll kick himself in 5-10 years
This.
Luckily, there are people who understands this risk and so there are already few cryptocurrencies that are tackling this.
The current leader is QRL – [www.theqrl.org](https://www.theqrl.org) – which is using post-quantum cryptography (currently XMSS) since their mainnet launch in 2018. They are professional and serious in their goals, the project is open-source and actively developed. They will soon be releasing a major upgrade which will bring Proof of Stake (currently it’s PoW) and EVM-compatible smart contracts, together with support for new CRYSTALS-Dilithium signature scheme, to their blockchain. You can buy it on MEXC or currently still mine it (RandomX algo).
There are some other projects which are claiming to be using post-quantum cryptography, but they:
* feels just as a hobby project or an experiment, and are also dead (e.g. Tidecoin, Arielcoin, Abcmint)
* are only using post-quantum algo in some insignificant part, but still rely on elliptic-curves, so they are still completely vulnerable (e.g. Algorand)
* are in fact just a ERC20 token on Ethereum network (so completely vulnerable), promising real product for years but still not delivering anything (e.g. QANplatform, which had also their bridge hacked and tokens stolen from their users)
* are claiming to be quantum secure, but internally they still use vulnerable cryptography (e.g. xx_network, which feels closed/centralized as the source code has restricted license + you need to be approved by them to run a node)
* are claiming to be quantum secure, but are closed-source, so who knows what’s going on inside (e.g. Abelian)
* …
Always be careful and verify the post-quantum claims, because there will be many projects just trying to scam you.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=q6OMBnID77A
You didn’t mention the rainbow algo used by abc was hacked
Fact Check: Abelian is open-sourced. [https://github.com/pqabelian](https://github.com/pqabelian)
It is now, but wasn’t 6 months ago when I wrote the comment.
Unbeknownst to most, there do exist crypto projects that aim to be quantum resistant. They’re few and far between, but are built to tackle the problem quantum computers pose to today’s standard of encryption, which governs the backbone of our financial system and the state of national security.
The investor money that’s flowing into crypto largely stems from the promising speculation of blockchain technology and the greed to get rich quick. Most crypto holders are unaware of (or even disinterested in) emerging quantum computing technologies and the risk they pose to encryption. Because of this, they end up purchasing coins/tokens with little-to-no reasonable utility basis beyond that of the typical transfer of wealth or the store of value, which are innate qualities of decentralized monies, having no regard to their vulnerability to quantum computer attacks.
Currently, the best contender in the race to secure financial assets against this threat is the Quantum Resistant Ledger (QRL). It uses the XMSS hash-based digital signature scheme in its codebase as an NIST (National Institute of Standards and Technology) approved method of quantum resistance. And unlike other PQ crypto competitors, QRL continues to receive active development on it’s codebase, and has been organically increasing in market sentiment.
If you’re interested in learning more I encourage you to visit their website: [theqrl.org](https://www.theqrl.org). Would love to have someone as knowledgeable and keen as you in our growing community, I believe you’d fit right in! Additionally, you can find their academic citations [here](https://www.theqrl.org/research/citations).
If crypto isn’t safe from quantum computers,what makes you think tradfi or governments or militaries are safe? We will have bigger problems lol but at least crypto can introduce quantum resistant keys
Tradfi and governments are already investing in quantum computing and quantum safe algorithms. The ones currently considered stable anyway will be ahead of the curve. Admittedly, some crypto is and will be too, so OP’s fears are somewhat just fears about the lack of quality control in crypto writ large, not quantum specific.
And this.
Because Cash, Gold, and physical assets cant be hacked…
So you’re talking about a post apocalypse economy? Bartering systems?
I am saying with quantum computers your crypto wallet will get hacked. (banks account too) though so yeah whats left? physical assets is all i can think of.
Like loop network. Check them out. They’re supposedly gonna be a quantum proof blockchain.
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Hi, what do you mean by the Ising model being an alternative to QC?
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> scales better than QC in solving a certain problem
Which problem are you referring to? Thanks.
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As in QC cannot solve this efficiently right now?
People are not throwing money at “crypto” for anything tech related. It is a self-sustaining, elaborated (not even always) ponzy scheme where numbers go up. I advice you to do some research on monetary emission and the tether scheme, how crypto deploys tech jargon to look better than it is, and the “blockchain” rebranding. People are being cheated, it is unrelated to any aspect of technology or techno-realism regarding security.
​
Most of cryptocurrencies and crypto in general are founded on Milesean and other Austrian economics theory of value, which is politically loaded. It has failed to do financial inclusion (only repeats capital accumulation), failed to be climate sustainable, failed to be electronic cash system. This is why there’s no use cases, and the goalpost of crypto has changed continuously since it broke out of the shadows in 2012-2013.
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In the crypto echo-system security is nothing but pretend. There’s numerous human vulnerabilities and attacks that have nothing to do with QC. For SHA256 based hashing systems they might be broken by QC at some point, might not, but it really doesn’t matter. Crypto is vaporware and hope that you’ll be smarter than everyone and make money on pretenses of relatively vague tech lingo, and relatively vague concepts of decentralization, the latter that has been achieved by other, sustainable and cheap means (fediverse, bittorrent,etc)
Is there a censorship resistant alternative of digital stored value if you live in an oppressive regime or government with hyperinflation?
In the US it doesn’t make sense but what are the cheap alternatives you mention?
>the latter that has been achieved by other, sustainable and cheap means
I’m not sure people should invest in it but it seems to have a potential use case for some.
Bitcoin is not a ponzi scheme, ponzis and pyramid schemes have a central authority/person at the top making all the money based on the work of other beneath them. Bitcoin does not work like that at all.
if anything stocks and the place where you can buy a burger, such as Burger king/Mcdonalds are pyramid schemes. ill agree that altcoins and the rest of crypto are scams and have no future, but not BTC, that ones clearly different and has a strong track record for 14/15 years now.
McDonalds is a pyramid scheme? Come on dude. Something having a central authority doesn’t make it a pyramid scheme.
> It is a self-sustaining, elaborated (not even always) ponzy scheme where numbers go up
So is the S&P500.
>People are not throwing money at “crypto” for anything tech related.
….
>People are being cheated, it is unrelated to any aspect of technology or techno-realism regarding security.
Do you think most people who buy stocks or milk are informed customers? Your statement is only true for most people interested in crypto.
>I advice you to do some research on monetary emission and the tether scheme
Since Tether is a centralised bullshit scheme, all criptocurrencies, coins and everything crypto related are ponzi schemes. Thats totally reasonable.
>It is a self-sustaining, elaborated (not even always) ponzy scheme where numbers go up.
People buy USD, EURO, BTC, or some other currency because they think they can somehow use it. They can use them as toilet paper, or to buy an orange, for example. **Buying anything is inherently risky.** Not just cryptocurrencies. USD is the reserve currency in the world, because of the economic and military might of the US. But this can change in the future. Most people buy USD because they think other people will value it. The most important thing to do before buying anything is researching about that thing as much as possible.
>It has failed to do financial inclusion (only repeats capital accumulation), failed to be climate sustainable….
Yeah you are politically loaded at all… If you read a little bit about economics from different schools of thought, you will realise that you can’t seperate economics from politics. Because definition of a “good economy”, or a “better economy” is itself not universal. And can’t be universal. Because we don’t share same ethical principles. Period.
Good writeup, you missed a big piece however.
The future of Cryptocurrency is not for buying NFTs or to purchase lattes at Starbucks.
The academic research is how to manage “machine to machine bidding” for hardware and software resources. Algorithms need a “currency.” They don’t take CCs. But can manage transactions of 00000001 cents. At close to the speed of light.
This is the latest tech leap. Zero humans are involved. Or lattes.
Algorand is already quantum safe as are some others. When quantum computers get closer to being practical there will just be hard forks of the existing blockchains to move to post quantum ciphers. I made a long ass post about it a while ago, it’s pinned to my profile if you are interested.
The accounts aren’t, only the chain itself. You can still steal Algorand coins with a QC
Fair point, but they are already halfway there and have plans to add falcon wallet signatures. My point was it is not impossible or even really that hard, it’s just that nobody things scalable quantum computers are that close to
It is pretty hard.
I saw the post when you first made it – it was fantastic. Can’t find it now, did it get removed?
You can replace RSA with a quantum-safe equivalents, which blockchains will do. They’re not as efficient and still an area of active research (a promising candidate called SIDH was recently broken) but will happen eventually. And they’re likely to happen long before quantum computers are a threat.
I have thought about this a lot, what will happen to old wallets? There are some Satoshi wallets with like a million bitcoin in it that hasn’t been touched for the entire time. Would the community just let it get plundered because it wont be updated? Will they lock out access to all nonupdated wallets? Some people time locked their wallets, itd really suck for them if they COULDNT update and wanted to. So many questions about this.
Those wallets are either intentional or unintentional bounties that the first cryptographers who break RSA will be entitled to.
Conversely, as long as those wallets remain untouched, you can continue to believe that RSA hasn’t been broken yet (except maybe by the NSA/GCHQ types)!
Because quantum computing has been coming for 30 years, but adamantly refuses to arrive?
It is here and exists, it just isnt at the level to do those things yet. At minimal even theoretically if it ran perfect itd have to be 4x better than the best to break it.
There is a problem with the “quantum safe” codes. None have been proved to be quantum safe. They are only assumed safe because a lot of smart people have tried to crack them and haven’t been able to. The same is true for RSA, elliptic curves etc. However, those are mathematical puzzles that have been attacked for generations. Quantum safe has only been attacked for a few years. In fact, one of the NSA’s quantum safe finalists, SIKE. was cracked by two guys in Belgium using a single core.
http://Www.theqrl.org
There are many quantum-safe algorithms out.
At least for the current known theoretical exploits of quantum computing.
The only issue is that these methods are too slow for traditional computing so that’s why you don’t see them.
——-
I’m not defending crypto at all just letting you know that while Quantum Computing has a chance to be able to do crazy stuff to traditional computers, it’s not like it will suddenly be a big problem.
If China finishes their projects and starts attacking our financial institutions, it will basically be a declaration of war.
If some private groups gets some and somehow manages to do something similar, they will be hunted by a multi-national group.
——
You have to remember that not only do we need the quantum computers to actually be functional in this way, but we need a ridiculous amount of resources to make them and maintain their functioning.
The more pressing issue is definitely AI being used to help with scamming, hacking, and espionage.
If quantum computing becomes good enough to hack BTC, your money isn’t safe anywhere, including banks, pension funds, 401ks, etc.
What do you mean lol. Why do we store money in banks even now? It’s not just crypto that has to adapt, everything has to. Quantum safe cryptography not only benefits crypto but will help maintain any security system we have in the future. If crypto is the avenue that boosts research in this field then so be it.
It’s not like “Oooh crypto will be void if quantum computers come into the picture”. Everything will be destroyed. All communication will be exposed completely. Bank money, assets, all digital information would be vulnerable. Why keep anything anywhere digitally then?
AI probably could have been a bigger concern. But that calmed down pretty fast. Q* and all.
It can do math. Did not seem to cause a ripple in the crypto community.
Pentaflops speeds now. Just seems to make the Satoshi algorithm even harder to crack.
Quantum computers are not a problem. Bitcoin is prepared. The reason? You can find the private key from public only if you know public key. You can’t compute private key from a bitcoin address. This means, in very simplified way, that public address, where you receive yout bitcoins is calculated from public key using some hash funcion. And there is no way to get that public key from the address. The public key for that address is published by owner of that address when he for the first time sends his bitcoins from that address. After this first send, quantum computers can start their attack. So if I use the address for receiving only and never spend, than I am perfectly fine. And this is the reason why all bitcoin wallets send all bitcoins out on first transaction. The wallet software creates new address, and sends everything from that first address to fresh unused address. So there is nothing left on original address after the first transaction. This way attacker knows only public key for addresses where is nothing left. Only centralized exchanges which reuse their wallets are endangered. And that can be easily fixed.
And quantum computers are not any better than regular ones in calculating inverse hash function.
I was quite intrigued by this argument at first, but then I had the following thought:
If we ignore runtime considerations right now, one way to find the private key that can spend a certain transaction would be to check *each* private key that maps to the recipient’s bitcoin address and see if we can create a valid transaction with it until we find (the) one that works.
Of course there is no traditional algorithm that could do this in a reasonable amount of time but at least the necessary information is available. My quantum kung-fu is not enough to tell whether there could be a quantum algorithm that can do it fast but it doesn’t sound impossible.
WDYT?
Quantum computers should be able to calculate private key from the public key. Quantum computers can solve only some specific tasks, they are not superior to non quantum computers outside of this specific domain. In the case of bitcoin, the trick is, that quantom computer can use an algorithm that can calculate easily which prime numbers were used in a multiplication. So basically, simplified version, not exactlly the same, buy for illustration good enough. My public key is 15. What is my private key? And the answer is, my private key is 3×5. Because 3 and 5 are prime numbers and 15 is a unique number, which was created by multiplication of 2 prime numbers 3 and 5. This sounds easy. But in reality, if those prime numbers are huge, like with 50 digits, it is super complicated to find out what were those prime numbers if you know only the result of the multiplication. This task is practically impossible to be solved with classic computers for large numbers, but there is a specific algorithm that can be used if you have a quantum computer. Any other task in bitcoin security domain outside of this trick is not possible to be solved by quantum computers easier. So, if you do not know public key, any trick you can imagine will not help you.
Ok, Shor’s algorithm alone wouldn’t be enough for sure but just because we don’t know of any quantum algorithm that can efficiently find a working private key doesn’t mean there is none, right? Whereas in classical computing we have reductions that prove that this would imply P=NP (which no one really expects, I guess).
Bitcoin uses SHA-256 hash function.When it comes to quantum computers there is a Grover’s algorithm that can work faster than regular computers in breaking security methods like SHA-256. But even with this quantum speedup, breaking SHA-256 is still a really tough job for a quantum computer. It would need to perform an insane number of operations, making it super hard even for quantum computers. In practice, this theoretical advantage is like nonexistent. Lets describe it human friendly terms. We want to go to the Andromeda Galaxy, classic computer allows us to walk. Quantum computer allows us to use bike. Still impossible, ever.
Thanks. Looking forward to reading about Grover’s algorithm now 🙂
i would not count on any of these stories. in fact nobody knows when quantum computing reaches the point of an exponential rising computing power. so much algorithms were described as “super safe” until the next bomb detonated. do you really think some global actor will inform you when he is about to destroy the bictoin system? Like USA informed hiroshima to savely evacuate? And people who make millions in revenue from these systems will not admit when it is seriously compromised so as not to cause mass panic. It is all your very own risk. At least do not give any shit to someone telling you sha-256 would be timeless secure. enough hashing algorithms are already destroyed.
All btc addresses prior to Nov 2012 are unhashed. Any early miners have their public keys exposed
Additionally, anyone with access to a sufficiently strong QC can run a ton of nodes and intercept the public key when a block is being presented
by that time we will have quantum defense systems
because were bored
We will need quantum computers that ate able to create encryptions that are quantum proof. That technology will be sold and crypto agencies will have no choice but to update their machines and softwares.
Commenting on Why people throw money at crypto if quantum computing is coming?…
Breaking that type of encryption is at least 30 or 40 years away if you listen to the experts. We’re nowhere NEAR breaking modern encryption and won’t be for another 30 years at least.
id be more interested in buying quantum coin s
I think “safe crypto” is an oxymoron and “safe cryptocurrency” is an illusion regardless of quantum computing’s state of progress.
because quantum computers doing anything important or useful is fantasy
Why would people spend 10 million to 100 million to Crack the block chain to get what may be the three million missing bit coin but if someone is going to spend this much money they would not spend it to brute force wallet keys. The only reason why Quantum Computing research has not been sequestered is because it is atleast a century away and you can bet it will be the NSA of US who will have the first scalable system.Google and their ilk will never crack this on their own.
This is specifically why I haven’t invested anything in crypto. I’m glad someone else has thought the same thing.
Aren’t you invested in the US dollar? Don’t you think that if crypto is broken, that’ll tank too?
There are only two types of people in Crypto. Scammers and idiots. This is the only answer you need for any crypto related logical concerns.
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You must not be a scammer.
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I’ve never even for a moment been concerned about quantum’s ability to break encryption. Just use a bigger key. Maybe someday we will have to use 256kb keys, but still.
This comment exposes your private key to the lack therefore of knowledge on this subject. http://Www.theqrl.org
I don’t get the connection (I just randomly saw this post but I don’t know anything about quantum computing)