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Finally a good use-case for bitcoin: a bounty for the first quantum computer to crack it.
"The amount of time the universe itself has left—around 0.65 billion billion years." Is this true?? I've never heard this claimed before.
Finally a good use-case for bitcoin: a bounty for the first quantum computer to crack it.
Not really. BTC has no value other than its ability to be exchanged for USD. If BTC is cracked no one will trade their USD for it anymore and it will be worthless.
They can siphon off a lot before other people catch on to people’s complaints and realize the best practices were followed
Problem includes far more than bitcoin.. Your bank for example
Not really. Your bank (and the whole web) can easily switch to a quantum resistant encryption algo when time comes. For Bitcoin this is much harder.
The community will just do a blockchain snapshot of balances at an agreed upon block and start a new distributed ledger with quantum resistant encryption
Snapshots have been done hundreds of times
It's worth mentioning that Bitcoin addresses aren't exposed on the blockchain as public keys, but hashes of the public keys. If you want to steal the coins you'll need to turn ripemd160(sha256(sha256(publicKey))) into a private key. Good luck.
The only solution would be to run a Bitcoin node on the hardware wallet itself, which is not possible right now.
So you have to treat the public key as a public key.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Not really. Your bank (and the whole web) can easily switch to a quantum resistant encryption algo when time comes. For Bitcoin this is much harder.
Its not much harder for bitcoin... The community will just do a blockchain snapshot of balances at an agreed upon block and start a new distributed ledger with quantum resistant encryption Snapshots have been done hundreds of times
Just to be clear, this has barely anything to do with any crypto-currency organization. It is a really regrettable framing for an event that should be of great interest to anyone dealing with cryptography, not just the fairly restricted group of crypto-currentcy enthusiasts. If scalable quantum computers can be built (which seems probable, as we are progressing fast in the number of qubits we can keep together), then…
The only truly safe encryption is quantum encryption. Any classical encryption algorithm should be breakable with quantum computers, even if we haven’t figured it out yet like with Shor’s.
Even if you don’t go that extreme, there’s no indication that e.g. AES is breakable.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
So then if Satoshi destroyed the private keys instead holding on to them just in case for an event like this, it's possible that someone might take the million or so BTC just sitting around? Depending on how easy it is, all those addresses that were abandoned containing 50 BTC are also up for grabs. Would a coin without public addresses be better suited against such future?
Not if Satoshi's coins have never moved. A bitcoin address is a hash of a public key. The public key isn't revealed until the first time funds are transferred out of that address.
Early Bitcoin transactions did not use addresses.
Example from block 1:
https://www.blockchain.com/btc/tx/0e3e2357e806b6cdb1f70b54c3...
You'll see at the bottom that the opcode is a PUSH / CHECKSIG rather than the later DUP / HASH160 / PUSH / EQUALVERIFY / CHECKSIG format.
So this isn't true. (blockchain.info derives an address but actually the pubkeys are right there in plain sight. Have at it!)
Just to be clear, this has barely anything to do with any crypto-currency organization. It is a really regrettable framing for an event that should be of great interest to anyone dealing with cryptography, not just the fairly restricted group of crypto-currentcy enthusiasts. If scalable quantum computers can be built (which seems probable, as we are progressing fast in the number of qubits we can keep together), then…
> which seems probable, as we are progressing fast in the number of qubits we can keep together Are we? Every so often I check back to see how well they're doing with actually running Shor's algorithm. In 2012 they managed to find that 21 = 3 x 7. And today... 21 = 3 x 7. That doesn't sound like progressing fast. Quantum annealing is doing well for itself, but it isn't any sort of threat to encryption.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Not really. Your bank (and the whole web) can easily switch to a quantum resistant encryption algo when time comes. For Bitcoin this is much harder.
Its not much harder for bitcoin... The community will just do a blockchain snapshot of balances at an agreed upon block and start a new distributed ledger with quantum resistant encryption Snapshots have been done hundreds of times
What do you do with old coins? Satoshi's one for example? Or lost coins that nobody has the key for?
Do you set a threshold day, after which all unclaimed coins are just marked destroyed forever? If not, how do you know someone claiming some coins didn't use a quantum computer to get the key?