At the level of isolation needed to find private keys from public, even a neutrino would disturb the system. Gravitation waves from someone making a step would wipe it out. Snapping fingers, moving eyes, breathing, etc. in a far away place would be enough.
Something more - if QC needs any kind of switching - following a program instead of hard-wired single-purpose system - any switching inside it would be enough to destroy the state.
I think you're overstating the fragility. I do agree that the greater the complexity, the more difficult it is to achieve sufficient stability... but having said that, the problem of decoherence is by no means insurmountable. Have a look at this paper, published back in February. Instead of the more standard silicon, this approach uses quantum dots as a basis, with artificial 'atoms' constructed around them. The resultant stability increase is considerable. The reason this works is that they remove the noise associated with having a nucleus and its spherical electron shells... instead they can just apply a voltage to pull additional electrons into orbit around the dot, and so build up clean, flat electron shells without any of that atomic complexity. It is then quite straightforward to fill each shell and then add one final electron to a new outermost shell. So the closed (fully doubly-occupied) shells sum to spin zero, and we can take the spin of the single electron in the final shell as the qubit... but a much more stable qubit than might be obtained via the silicon approach. |
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Don't worry, quantum computers will not affect the blockchain, and it may take dozens of years to be able to affect, until we reach that time.
Bitcoin will have updated its algorithms in order to make decoding difficult or impossible.
Unfortunately, I don't think it's that straightforward. The issue is that if bitcoin is upgraded to be quantum-resistant, then all coins will then need to be moved to new quantum-resistant addresses. What happens to coins that aren't moved (or can't be moved, because either the key has been lost or the owner is deceased)? Coins that aren't moved would remain vulnerable and could be stolen by anyone with a sufficiently powerful QC. Do we leave them to be stolen? Or do we put in place say a 3 month deadline to move, and anything not moved by that time is burnt? Both options are contentious, both bring their own problems. |
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Last time I've read about quantum computers, there was a problem with the vibrations: a truck passing nearby could affect the results of the computer. If that's still not fixed, QC is not reliable for anything more than lab tests. The longer the task (like cracking Bitcoin) the bigger the chance a vibration has broken the results. So Bitcoin, the banking system, communication and so on ... we are safe.
What if they put a quantum computer inside a bunker?The problem with vibrations might be solved.  It isn't just physical vibrations, it's any interaction with the world outside the quantum system. The system needs to be perfectly isolated - or as near perfect as can be managed. Any interaction can lead to loss of information through the collapse of the wave function. Electromagnetic fields or any form of radiation can trigger loss of quantum coherence. This is why quantum computers have to be cooled close to absolute zero. The biggest challenge to developing a workable, large-scale quantum computer is not simply increasing the number of qubits to increase the processing power, it's reducing decoherence to a manageable level. Obviously as we add qubits then decoherence becomes more of an issue, because we increase heat in the system - but it is this decoherence rather than number of qubits that is the primary obstacle. We also need to understand that the underlying physics here - interaction with the outside environment leading to collapse of the wave function - is precisely what allows measurement of a quantum system to occur in the first place. Where a normal classical bit can be 0 (off) or 1(on) depending on flow of current, a system of entangled qubits is more of a probabilistic smear of values across 0 and 1 and everything in between. When we then try to take measurement, we collapse the wave function into a definite 0 or 1 value. This is how quantum computers work, and how (in certain circumstances and for certain use cases) they provide a phenomenal advantage over classical computers. QCs can, through entanglement, process many possibilities at once, whilst still, through collapse, evaluating to a definite binary yes/no end state. |
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~
I don't think that's accurate - I know we've been here before though. The advantage of quantum processing is in the superposition, the ability to explore many paths at once - but it still resolves to a classical 0/1 outcome. --- I didn`t claim to have any knowledge or expertise on quantum computer; I am just curious about the industry and how beautiful they are bringing technology from our current state to the future. For Honeywell specifically, I am skeptical because of the metric they've chosen to use: In early March 2020, Honeywell International joined the race to create a quantum computer. The company is preparing to release the most powerful system in the world.
The manufacturer of industrial equipment for the aerospace sector says its quantum computer will double the performance of the most powerful quantum machine available today. Their new system will have 64 cubic meters, while the fastest quantum computer built by IBM will have 32 cubic meters.
Whilst it's good that more companies are getting involved, I'm extremely skeptical of Honeywell's claim. Their assessment is based on the assumption that Quantum Volume is the defining metric for QC power, and that's very much open to question. Quantum Volume is the metric that IBM uses: Quantum Volume (QV) is a hardware-agnostic metric that we defined to measure the performance of a real quantum computer. Each system we develop brings us along a path where complex problems will be more efficiently addressed by quantum computing; therefore, the need for system benchmarks is crucial, and simply counting qubits is not enough. As we have discussed in the past, Quantum Volume takes into account the number of qubits, connectivity, and gate and measurement errors. Material improvements to underlying physical hardware, such as increases in coherence times, reduction of device crosstalk, and software circuit compiler efficiency, can point to measurable progress in Quantum Volume, as long as all improvements happen at a similar pace. The thing is... absolutely no-one else uses that metric. IBMs QC is currently the most powerful in the world, based on Quantum Volume, because it is the only one that uses Quantum Volume as a metric.It looks like Honeywell are trying to put out a QC that is more powerful than IBM's, using Quantum Volume to determine that power... thereby becoming the "most powerful" QC in the world by improving on its only competitor on that metric. It is great that another company is entering the space, and it will certainly be a big achievement if newcomers Honeywell can out-perform IBM... I just think that the "most powerful" claim is a little misleading. --- As I`ve do the math  in google, I found out that it can really poised risk on certain features which is underlying on blockchain technology to mostly in its minimal, to mention few are “How Private Addresses might compromised its encryption and mining capabilities”. I've shared this a few times, and make no apology for doing so again - it's all open to discussion of course, I'm not claiming to be any authority on the subject, just an enthusiast - but here's my summary of how quantum computing can and will affect bitcoin: Hi all  I thought I’d try to summarise Bitcoin's vulnerabilities to Quantum Computers, as well as some potential defences, and get it all in one post. Apologies for the wall of text, but hopefully it is useful... Mining can potentially be much quicker with QCs.The current PoW difficulty system can be exploited by a Quantum Computer using Grover’s algorithm to drastically reduce the number of computational steps required to solve the problem. The theorised advantage that a quantum computer (or parallelised QCs) have over classical computers is a couple of orders of magnitude, so ~x100 easier to mine. This isn’t necessarily a game-changer, as this QC speed advantage is likely to be some years away, by which time classical computers will surely have increased speed to reduce the QC advantage significantly. It is worth remembering that QCs aren’t going up against run-of-the-mill standard equipment here, but rather against the very fast ASICs that have been set up specifically for mining. Re-used BTC addresses are 100% vulnerable to QCs.Address Re-Use. Simply, any address that is re-used is 100% vulnerable because a QC can use Shor’s algorithm to break public-key cryptography. This is a quantum algorithm designed specifically to solve for prime factors. As with Grover’s algorithm, the key is in dramatically reducing the number of computational steps required to solve the problem. The upshot is that for any known public key, a QC can use Shor’s approach to derive the private key. The vulnerability cannot be overstated here. Any re-used address is utterly insecure.Processed (accepted) transactions are theoretically somewhat vulnerable to QCs.Theoretically possible because the QC can derive private keys from used addresses. In practice however processed transactions are likely to be quite secure as QCs would need to out-hash the network to double spend. Unprocessed (pending) transactions are extremely vulnerable to QCs.As above, a QC can derive a private key from a public key. So for any unprocessed transaction, a QC attacker can obtain the private key and then create their own transaction whilst offering a much higher fee, so that the attacker’s transaction gets onto the blockchain first, ahead of the genuine transaction. So block interval and QC speed are both crucial here – it all depends on whether or not the a QC can hack the key more quickly than the block is processed. Possible defences... Defences using classical computers.- Modify the PoW system such that QCs don’t have any advantage over classical computers. Defending PoW is not as important as defending signatures (as above), because PoW is less vulnerable. However various approaches that can protect PoW against QCs are under development, such as Cuckoo Cycle, Momentum and Equihash.
- Modify the signature system to prevent easy derivation of private keys. Again, various approaches are under development, which use some pretty esoteric maths. There are hash-based approaches such as XMSS and SPHINCS, but more promising (as far as I can tell) are the lattice-based approaches such as Dilithium, which I think is already used by Komodo.
Defences using quantum computers.As I’ve said a few times, I’m more of a bumbling enthusiast than an expert, but exploiting quantum properties to defend against QC attack seems to me a very good idea. In theory properties such as entanglement and the uncertainty principle can offer an unbreakable defence. Again, people are busy researching this area. There are some quite astonishing ideas out there, such as this one. |
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For many businesses the real financial impact of this year's problem will happen next year.
This is absolutely true. We are only seeing the very beginnings of the economic impact at the moment. I'm unsure about the inevitability of stagflation, but it's certainly a very real possibility. I would say the 'stag' part is extremely likely, the 'flation' part perhaps less so. |
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As a USD/GBP/fiat alternative for day-to-day payments, probably not. I've said this a dozen times and I'm going to say this again: we have services such as PayPal/Venmo/CashApp that people can use for cashless transactions.
As for trust in Bitcoin knowing that the federal reserve is going full mass printing mode, probably? If yes, probably not a significant amount of people though. A lot of people still don't know the negative side effects of heavy quantitative easing. In social media(Facebook, specifically), my U.S. friends actually get giddy with them knowing they might get more stimulus checks.
Yes, exactly. CV19 should be a reason for greater adoption of bitcoin, not because bitcoin is contactless, but because the government response to CV19 exposes the inadequacies and inequities of the endless money-printing of the fiat system. In practice people tend to see this as 'yay! free cash!' rather than understanding what this actually means - despite us having been through a similar process with the last financial crisis. And in practice we are still some time away from bitcoin being seen as anything other than a highly speculative asset, which I would say is why crypto markets got hit hard when the lockdowns started. |
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Pretty interesting graph by the way, I've never seen this before. Per Capita though is going to be one that is going to be heavily skewed towards the US looking much better, obvs though
True, but whilst the US has had x5 growth in GDP per capita, China has had x40 in the same time - admittedly from a low starting point. I do like that style of graph, I think it illustrates points that might not be apparent with more standard techniques. There is a CV19 chart I shared a couple of months ago that employs a similar approach. |
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I noticed that nobody discuss Bitcoin Diamond.
These bitcoin forks are all the same. They have zero actual purpose, and are merely vehicles for speculation. Prices may rise and fall as people trade them, but the end state will be a very low price because the coin is pointless. I would advise to stay well away from these coins, unless you are particularly skilled at trading and are confident of extracting profit. |
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Is China going to dominate the world?
Yes, I think so, based on trajectory over the last few decades. It depends on your metric, but this site provides some useful comparators (albeit 18 months old). You also mentioned the China/India 'conflict'. This I think is a separate issue and the Himalayas will become more of a battleground in the decades to come as growing populations combine with climate change to make control of water sources tremendously important (see also the Grand Ethiopian Renaissance Dam).  |
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This is a case of balancing percentage increase with chance of increase.
The coins that will increase the most will be some tiny, micro-cap coins that no-one has heard of... but I would say ETH is a better bet. It's very unlikely to go x100, but the likelihood of any increase at all is much more than you'll get with a random small coin.
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Certainly CV19 had an impact in dampening prices across all of crypto (as well as the 'normal' non-crypto markets).
But I think halving was priced in anyway - we all knew that it was going to happen; there would not have been any logical reason for a sudden huge price lift the instant that halving occurred.
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It's almost 6 months since the coronavirus took its toll on every aspect of human lives. it has been accompanied by widescale job loss, a rise in the unemployment rate, a reduced standard of living, and intense hardship. From the economic perspective, what will be the fate of the global economic situation and normal day to day business if this pandemic doesn't go away by the end of this year?
Even if the pandemic suddenly disappears today, we will still be feeling the economic impact for years to come. We have had the huge bailouts already. What comes next is that we have the consequences of the lockdown, plus the consequences of the bailouts. Some companies will scale back, some will shut down entirely, huge numbers of people will become unemployed. This is due to the loss of custom during lockdown, and the uncertainty of the 'new normal' of restricted reopenings and reduced capacity due to the requirement for social distancing. On top of this, the bailouts have been a temporary measure just to keep everything from collapsing immediately. The bailouts don't return everything to normal permanently, they just keep 'normal' ticking over until economic activity can resume. When such vast amounts of money have been created out of thin air, there is always an economic price to pay afterwards, as we saw in 2008... the difference this time being that the situation is much worse. But there are opportunities here as well. The oil price has collapsed and there is a lot of pressure to initiate a green recovery. Whether or not governments will embrace this opportunity is of course open to question. |
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I was perfectly comfortable thinking that Cnut237 is a c*** until you started this thread. Now I have to google some king.
I never said I wasn't a c***! Stop twisting my words! I may be all manner of genitalia, but I will never reveal it (or indeed them) on here  |
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So, in your mind, because a cop in Minneapolis committed a crime, you can assault a cop in Florida?
No, not at all. I'm saying it's understandable, not that it's justifiable. --- Edit: whats your demographic? Age group, life experience, work experience, etc..?
Irrelevant in the context of what I wrote above. We each have biases and should work to try to overcome them in our judgements and decision-making. My user name on here is a part of that. Cnut was an 11th C monarch who - apocryphally - was believed to be all powerful, and came up with a good demonstration of why he wasn't. It's a caution against absolutism. Similarly with '237', it's 'not quite all the time', not 24/7. Finally, the two together can easily be dismissed as a deliberately misspelled swear word combined with a random numerical suffix to constitute a throwaway account name with no thought behind it, when in fact the opposite is the case. We should always make an attempt to understand the other side. |
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rioting youngsters attacking cops. [...] Have you never heard the phrase "shooting the messenger"?
If you think the cops are innocent messengers, I'd recommend watching the George Floyd video. why do you refuse to consider other viewpoint ?
We each have our own unique upbringing and our own unique experiences. We each have our own perspectives and unconscious biases. Also, if we are citizens in democracies then we have both rights and responsibilities. A common problem is that people think they can have the rights without the responsibilities. It is our responsibility as adults to be aware of our biases, and to try to understand the points of view of others. Regardless of your upbringing, if you refuse to consider any viewpoint other than your own, then you will never act or think in a reasonable manner, and you will always incite conflict. It is important to consider evidence, but also context. It is important to consider both what is shown, and what remains un-shown, and why the distinction exists. Evidence suggests very strongly that the police are representatives of a system with an institutional bias against non-whites. I'm sure there are plenty of fine upstanding cops who are pillars of the community and work tirelessly to uphold justice and safeguard the populace. Equally some will be white supremacists and enjoy using power over black people. But the BLM protests aren't really about individual cops, they are about the bigger picture, and in this context each cop stands as a representative of the whole. |
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No, I mean literally in terms of qubits.
Thanks for the clarification - I was making a lazy assumption. But I do think that, in the end, we come back to this: the problems are more to do with phenomena such as decoherence, error rates and a near-absolute-zero temperature constraint, rather than, as we might think, the number of qubits. It's more single problems to be overcome than it is scaling up the processing power. Tremendously challenging problems, yes, but a different sort of problem to what we're used to thinking of in terms of computer advancement.
It's not really adding extra qubits that's the problem, it's more ensuring that the quantum system is stable enough to allow sufficiently persistent and low-noise entanglement - and whilst obviously the challenges do increase as we scale up the number of qubits, if the challenges affecting low-qubit systems can be overcome, then adding extra qubits and scaling up the processing power is much less of a problem and is likely to happen very quickly. |
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they prioritize a person based on its age, why? because it would be more worthy if you save a productive person over an old and weak person. The government is really doing this for the economy in the future days.
It is true that governments value citizens of working age, those who 'contribute' to the economy, a lot more than they value older people who have contributed in the past, but are now retired. But it goes much deeper than that. This pandemic would have had a much smaller effect if governments around the world had implemented lockdowns much earlier, as soon as it became apparent what was happening in China... but they didn't, the 'cost' of shutting down the economy briefly was deemed unacceptable, and so governments gambled with the lives of their citizens instead, in the hope that they could escape relatively economically unscathed. Obviously what happened is that the virus expanded dramatically everywhere, and governments then had to implement much longer and more stringent lockdowns than would have been the case had they acted earlier. In the end, they took a huge death toll and a huge economic hit... all because they didn't want to risk that smaller initial economic hit of a brief precautionary lockdown. |
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This article is making it appear that Ethereum is better and more utilized than bitcoin for real utility while making it appear that bitcoin's activity is done only for speculation.
They both have rock-solid use-cases, but both are much more used for speculation than anything else. I don't think we can convincingly argue that any crypto - barring stable coins - are used mostly to fulfill any actual use case. We are still I think years away from maturity here, which comes with full integration into mainstream society. |
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Processing power of quantum computers may increase more rapidly relative to classical computers but it does not in terms of qbits gained. Quantum computers still need to increase their processing power by a factor of 20-30 before things get interesting.
20 to 30x is only an extra 4 or 5 qubits, though (2^4=16, 2^5=32). just because the algorithm already exists doesn't mean it's necessarily easy to implement. I do assume development on implementing Shor's algorithm will start as soon as it's computationally possible though.
Yes, you're right. I concede the point. I suppose what I'm trying to say is that it's very difficult to estimate when a QC that is capable of cracking bitcoin might become available, and that we can't use the development history of classical computers as a guideline. The challenges to building a workable, reliable large-scale QC do remain immense, but we are all aware that work is continuing at pace, and a QC threat to bitcoin may be with us soon than we might envisage. I do think it's important that making bitcoin quantum-safe be considered as a problem to resolve now, rather than at some indefinite point in the future. |
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Are we going to see a new leading coin?
No. A temporary shift is not much to worry about. As time goes on and bitcoin increases in price, bitcoin mining will become more profitable. For the forks however, they are all pointless coins with zero use-case beyond simple speculation. Fork prices will drop over the longer-term, and bitcoin prices will increase. |
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