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A Quantum Computing-Dominated World Is Coming In Less Than 10 Years, Says CEO Of Acronis

http://www.forbes.com/sites/nanhiein/2016/08/15/a-quantum-computing-dominated-world-is-coming-in-less-than-10-years-says-ceo-of-acronis/amp/ (http://www.forbes.com/sites/nanhiein/2016/08/15/a-quantum-computing-dominated-world-is-coming-in-less-than-10-years-says-ceo-of-acronis/amp/)

An interesting article on quantum computing, claiming that developments are coming quickly in this area. My understanding is that while bitcoin is not wholly broken by the availability of quantum computers, there would be some things that need to be addressed. I hate to distract from transaction capacity improvements, but does this need to start moving up on someone's to-do list?

There is some brief discussion of cryptography most of the way through the article, but only from the standpoint that greater privacy can be achieved with QC. That sounds hopeful, as until now I'd only heard of QC in the context of breaking existing password-based protections.

Off-topic note: It is funny how people can be very intelligent in some respects, and then very foolish in others. Near the end of the article it claims QC could lead to ultralight cars that only weigh 15 kg.  Speaking as an auto engineer in Illinois, this immediately gives rise in my mind to visions of cars rolling across the landscape like tumbleweeds on the first windy day.  ;D

Every single type of security in every single area will be broken if this comes to pass. Everything will have to be repaired. Worry about your power supply being disrupted or your food not being delivered before Bitcoin.

I have heard somewhere even quantum computer is not a real threat for bitcoin/blockchain technology because till that time all other technological systems should be upgraded to make it unbreakable by QC so bitcoin network will also be upgraded by that time to withstand and to be operational even when QC get out in the real world.

My point in citing this article was to raise the question: Has that time now come to act, or at least get the ball rolling in some meaningful way?

We spent a lot of time discussing block size and transaction volumes here while bottlenecks on bitcoin xfer volume were hypothetical. I was just over at blockchain.info looking at recent blocks and the bottleneck is no longer hypothetical. Yet we are still waiting for segwit to roll out, much less any change to block size. I'm afraid a similar talk-but-no-action scenario could arise with QC, with disastrous results.

This alone could render blockchain tech useless.

The progress will never end and security will evolve as the same speed. In 10 years the security will evolve and even with quantum technology, I think it will be almost impossible to compromise the bitcoin security.

When we face a new challenge, we found always a new solution.

QC has limitations.

solving binary logic problems QC doesnt handle well.. expect a 2x 'efficiency' rate
so things like SHA.. dont expect much efficiency of being brute forced by a QC system.

but things like ECDSA that can have deeper efficiency of being brute forced by a QC system.25-256x efficiency.

the thing is though. the cycle rate of a QC CPU compared to a binary based CPU right now has not much difference. so its going to take a while for something desktop PC size to outperform a PC.

QC computers has along time before its truly scaled to compete.

Just finished this magazine and was more interested in the top 50 fintech companies,think those are more in line with bitcoin and its current failings in the lending sphere. Recommend the read if you have time.


Its really exciting to think that we are pushing this into overdrive and the concepts are going to start flying out of the wood work in such a short time.
Medical advancements will go through the roof and we can enter the body modification for more functional living.
The crypto world may need to re-draft all together but I think we can cross that bridge when it comes,say 5 years at the earliest?
I like this field of creating totally new materials,its a real great time to be alive.

The question you put out is more in how fast you think they can achieve this and I think we are still dealing with a decent amount of time to adjust to it. Bitcoin is well positioned for say the next step into virtual reality and I think that aspect will blow the roof off once we combine it with Quantum computing.

Current estimates say that SHA-256 and ECC will be broken in less than 20 years, assuming that current hurdles are overcome and the number of qubits double every year.

The world may soon be dominated by quantum computing, according to that guy, but he needs to have something to back up such a bold prediction. We're still struggling when it gets to actually getting a quantum computer to give off outputs from decent amounts of inputted data. Right now it's not looking like something that will be working anytime soon.

15 pounds cars, interesting proposition, poor realistic application. I would assume they would have to be electric if anything.

Yeah this has been asked before, and the 1st reaction has to be this.  If QC goes main stream, bitcoin security is going to be the least of your worries,  every single encryption method we have will be open for business.  :-\

How difficult would it be to go to biometric security. Isnt that the solution? Me thinks so.

lol biometrics. nope thats not a solution, thats:
worse than a password.
better then a 4 digit pin number/door code

sorry but the entropy of biometrics is weak.
also it starts locking funds to someones identity. forever, you cant just move funds to a different password/privkey
lastly brute forcing the entropy of biometrics is easier than you think. its less entropy than 256bit

put it this way. people are put in prison for matching just 9 points of reference of a fingerprint

Are quantum computers even a reality? Seems like a lot of talk and NO actual demonstration.

Wouldn't be surprised if Quantum Mechanics is just a theory that people started accepting as truth. Probably never going to exist.

It means if SHA 2 family will be broken too. ::)

but ECC is more vulnerable than SHA256.  not the other way round.
but bitcoin can adapt. new keypairs will be introduced using different curves and higher hash security

Which means, designing a new address will exit from SHA-2. The current address was generating from SHA-2.
But a lot of speculation was saying if SHA-2 was already in the orange area when the Satoshi nakamoto has made bitcoin.
I may think if they were knowing about this.

The headline is a bit misleading. I think the Acronis CEo says that within 10 years there will be real world use of Quantum Computing, however this doesn't mean the world will be "dominated" by it at that time. I agree that advances in Quantum Computing should be monitored closely by Bitcoin developers to be prepared to take appropriate action well in advance.

One reason for the huge advances in the field are the projects of various three letter agencies, that received huge funding to break encryption. This is a serious threat, especially because a breakthrough could remain undiscovered.


You forgot about the passengers. Sitting on tumbleweeds prevents them from rolling. And cars could be chained to trees when parked, for example... :D

ya.ya.yo!

Actually quantum computing technology can make blockchains stronger. Can you imagine how harder it will be to crack if quantum computing is implemented in Proof of Work? It might more so make PoW more efficient, using less power but make the cryptography part more robust. Surely there will be more positives than negatives.

Domination of the blockchain occurs as soon as the first QC with enough qbits is available (anywhere!).
You don't need to wait until they are 'scaled to compete'.
'Enough qbits' means enough to do the hashes and the ecc in reasonable time, of course.

I think it's important to understand that going 'mainstream' is entirely irrelevant to the discussion concerning 'domination'.
Once there exists a few (maybe just one) QC with enough qbits, the domination occurs. The financial incentives will be irresistable.

Look up the 'quantum mechanic' Seth Lloyd. He demonstrates quantum computing every day in his lab.
FYI, he predicts QC with 50-5000 qbits available within 5-10 years.

An important distinction I don't see anyone mentioning in this thread is between the type of QC used to do stuff like factoring etc, and the type of QC used to do optimization. The latter are call adiabatic (or annealing)  computers.

The article mentioned in OP is concerned with annealers only, afaics. These are the d-wave thingies being used at google, etc. Physicists are still uncertain if there exists any quantum computing going on in these things at all.

The QCs we need to watch for security of the bitcoin blockchain are the factoring type. These already exist, actually do QC, and the estimates for the scaling of them seem to indicate maybe 5-10 years for a worrying number of qbits.

If quantum computing will be reality someday - and if this technology will be really good at breaking encryption, codes, algorithms - all kind of mathematical problems.
Then we are not the ones who should worry, whole banking system will be destroyed as they rely on encryption to keep their transactions and databases secure.
We have quantum processors - but they are horrible now, they need special conditions to operate (to be cooled to absolute zero and be free from any electromagnetic interference).

This is certainly true.


My point was that 'horrible', expensive and shielding requirements don't matter. The disaster occurs as soon as one exists with enough qbits. Presumably it's existence would be kept secret, but we'd know from the open research how close it was - and that by itself would be enough to cause problems.

tl;dr: without implementation of qc resistant systems, the effects will occur at the tip of research - not when we all have a qc on our desk.

All existing systems in quantum then I think is a good thing. But if for now indeed is not something only gives us an advantage, because in quantum systems have not been effective enough in carrying out all of the existing systems in the world. But I think there is a possibility of future quantum will be a good place to do or change all the existing system because I was looking at the quantum has good potential

A common misconception is that if PoW is more energy efficient, then Bitcoin will use less energy.

The reality is that the cost of PoW depends on the value of the block reward. So, if the cost of PoW goes down because of the increased energy efficiency, then economic incentives will cause mining to increase until the cost of the energy returns to the value of the block reward.

The way to reduce the amount of energy used for PoW then is to increase the cost of the energy or to reduce the block reward.

Bitcoins will begin to disappear all of a sudden and it will be a big mystery. Thats how we will know its quantum computing. The price of bitcoin could crash if we are not prepared.

it is still the same old story. qc will come eventually and it will change a lot. but bitcoin should not be effected since qc are very specialized in their abilities. bitcoin will have enough time to adjust and most important there are much more higher value targets then bitcoin.

I have seen the news about 2 versions of quantum computer already being created. A lot of people fear this will be the end of btc, because it will be solved. That is not true, however. Even if a quantum computer is 100 000 timess better than our computers usually are, it would take billions of billions of years to break the btc code and stuff. So, my guess is btc can experience the time of price going down but only because of panic, not of the real threat.

I read it could calculate a private key in 5 to 10 minutes. This is something to be concerned about.