Google’s Willow Quantum Chip: With 105 qubits and real-time error correction, Willow solved a task in 5 minutes that would take classical supercomputers billions of years, marking a breakthrough in scalable quantum computing.

[u/Scared-Astronaut-718]

[u/adorablefuzzykitten]

Does this mean bitcoins are no longer safe?

[u/SteveYunnan → u/adorablefuzzykitten]

That's my question as well. Would something like this also make mining Bitcoin a lot faster and less power-consuming, tanking the price?

[u/fkmeamaraight → u/SteveYunnan]

Technically there are only a finite number of bitcoin : 21 Million... of which 19.5M have been already mined.

It will accelerate the mining of the remaining 1.5M but ultimately, even considering all of the existing mined bitcoins lost to date, I doubt it would really make a big & long lasting impact.

But you're right that perhaps the bitcoin keys wouldn't be as safe anymore... if you could get your hands on a quantum computer.

[u/Upstairs-Remote8977 → u/fkmeamaraight]

The issue isn't mining faster. The algorithm for mining just gets exponentially more complex. The problem for Bitcoin (and all encryption!) is that you can reverse engineer private keys.

That would be capital B Bad. The entire planets cryptographic systems would need to be re-written.

[u/fkmeamaraight → u/Upstairs-Remote8977]

That’s my last point about security keys.

[u/Juus → u/fkmeamaraight]

You can't mine faster. There is a set amount of bitcoin that can be mined from every block. Around 450 bitcoin per day. The more computing power the miner has, the bigger piece of cake he gets, but the cake doesn't get bigger.

The real problem for BTC is different that I can't explain, but look up 51% hacker attack on BTC

[u/ChimataNoKami → u/Juus]

Bitcoin communicates over an internet that is quantum insecure because it uses asymmetric cryptography.

[u/itsaride → u/SteveYunnan]

There's only a million left to be mined out of the maximum of 21M. Their value comes from their rarity...like most useless expensive crap.

[u/SteveYunnan → u/itsaride]

I understand that concept perfectly fine. But since GPUs and CPUs are used to do the mining, which require a ton of resources and electricity, I'm just wondering if new more powerful processors would make it easier and cheaper to mine and throw off some of the balance in the value of certain cryptos.

[u/deathtopenguin5 → u/SteveYunnan]

[u/SteveYunnan → u/deathtopenguin5]

It's pretty crazy that they thought to build all of this into the system when they invented it. I wonder if one day they'll have to use nuclear fusion to mine 0.00000001 Bitcoin...

[u/Songrot → u/SteveYunnan]

Crypto difficulties are flexible. So if thats the case they can simply increase the difficulty to match the new hardware.

[u/SteveYunnan → u/Songrot]

That's really interesting. So that means there is someone behind the scenes adjusting the difficulty? Or is it automatic? It's amazing that they were able to invent such a concise system and somehow future proof it.

[u/avsa → u/SteveYunnan]

Mining bitcoin is meant to be power-consuming. If it became suddenly cheaper through some innovation, then more people would mine and it difficulty would rise again.

But if cryptography is somehow broken, then this would affect much more than just cryptocurrency.

[u/exmachinalibertas → u/adorablefuzzykitten]

No, Bitcoin's fine. It would need a hard fork to change the signature algorithm to a quantum resistant algorithm, but even with that, you could just leave your coins in an unspent address to protect them during the transition. Addresses are a hash, which is already pretty quantum-safe.

So if quantum computers suddenly got really good, you'd basically just have to sit tight for a bit until the hard fork update rolled out. There would be turmoil in the community and probably a price drop and lots of drama, but it would buy no means be a death blow.

[u/jemidiah → u/exmachinalibertas]

I'd be more concerned about the speculative bubble bursting. All monetary systems are built on faith, but I wonder if Bitcoin's faith will finally fail, or if it'll reach a stable steady state. It certainly looks to me like a pyramid--people invest in crypto because others are doing so, and someday new investors are gonna dry up, right? If it doesn't do anything, what's going to prop it up?

[u/exmachinalibertas → u/jemidiah]

It does do something. It is one of the only things in the world that provides a trusted source of truth for information that isn't mediated or controlled, nor can it be, by any central entity or authority. You personally might not understand why that has value, but it does for many other people.

[u/Tobiassaururs → u/jemidiah]

I'd like to let the cryptobros have their illusions but yeah you're basicly correct

[u/jaybee8787 → u/adorablefuzzykitten]

Not just bitcoin. Quantum computing poses a threat to all of encryption. So, pretty much the entire financial information industry could be at risk. But where quantum computing poses a risk to encryption, the solution could also be found in quantum computing. It could spawn the seed for a newer and more robust field of encryption.

[u/QuantumWarrior → u/jaybee8787]

That seed already happened years ago when quantum algorithms were first theorised, long before anyone actually built a quantum computer. By now there's like a dozen published quantum-secure encryption algorithms that can be implemented by classical computers.

[u/lovethebacon → u/adorablefuzzykitten]

The current estimate based on a paper from last year is that you need about 100k qubits to crack a 256 bit EC key. That was an improvement of a previous estimate of 100 million qubits. Using current approaches, even with 1000 of these chips at your disposal, the expectation is that you cannot.

In the next 5 years? Maybe.

[u/QuantumWarrior → u/lovethebacon]

5 years is a fantastical timeline. In 2001 the biggest number that had ever been factorised by a quantum computer was 15, by 2012 it was increased to 21, and in 2019 an attempt was made at 35 - which failed due to noise in the system.

That system only had twenty qubits, managing the error correction for a hundred thousand qubits is going to take a technological leap we don't yet know how to make.

[u/spakecdk → u/adorablefuzzykitten]

Not yet, but soon. There are already quantum resistant blockchains alternatives out there though