Hackers/Public will have Access to Quantum Computers in 5-10 years?

[very_452001]

On the contrary, around 2030, Hackers or Governments using Quantum Computers will not harm Bitcoin but do good that is recover all the lost millions of Bitcoins in dead dormant btc addresses that have been gathering dust never recovered. If that could happen then that would be a good thing right as it will satisfy the btc demand at that time. But then again if this happens then it will stop demand and crash the btc price right 

Bitcoin is Bit Binary 1's and 0's digital based on the traditional Moores's Law harwdware that is nearly maxing out now so eventually the world will change over to Quantum Computing that is not digital. From the start of this Quantum tech new area we will see the most advancement in human history so much that all the latest digital tech we see today will be laughable by future generations in lets say 50 years time. Travelling at the speed of light or even time travel is possible under Quantum technology & its advancement 

I bet alien civilisations in the universe are already using Quantum computers systems. I wonder how Will Smith & Jeff Goldblum manage to upload a old fashioned binary digital virus onto the quantum alien computer systems on the alien mothership in the film independence day 

Okay jokes aside Quantum Mechanics, Quantum Physics and Quantum Computing is just weird stuff. Quantum physics goes against everything you learnt in normal physics.

Quantum Computers will be used to figure out what's going in black holes in the universe that scientists to this day still cant figure out with binary supercomputers they have today so the best answer they come up with now is several theories that can be any one of them

Quantum era will eliminate all the scientific theories we have been taught in school and establish more scientific facts.

All that said above you guys sure Quantum Computers cant decrypt Bitcoin  ?

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[ranochigo]

But then again if this happens then it will stop demand and crash the btc price right 

Yes. People will start panicking, but again depends on whether they're willing to spend a few millions or even billions to recover a few million bucks worth of it.

All that said above you guys sure Quantum Computers cant decrypt Bitcoin  ?

Look, there is nothing to decrypt in Bitcoin. Nothing on Bitcoin is encrypted, or at least by design. It is possible to store encrypted strings on it but that is not the question here. Quantum computers will eventually crack ECDSA or asymmetric cryptography, which basically means all the cryptography that we're using for security online. Which also means thousands of terabytes of sensitive data that the governments would love to get... Don't you think it is far more worth it to get those than to get a couple of Bitcoins?

Point is, quantum computers will be very expensive to use and potentially fairly unstable at the earlier stages. We're still decades away. But by then, we would've introduced alternative schemes and adopt them to largely mitigate the threat of it, at least. Pre-emptive measures are always possible.

[Ali771samir]

Quantum computers are one of the biggest enemies of the  blockchain, but I think by then newer and more powerful APIs will be built for the blockchain, and blockchain knowledge will increase to counter them.

[very_452001]

But then again if this happens then it will stop demand and crash the btc price right  

Yes. People will start panicking, but again depends on whether they're willing to spend a few millions or even billions to recover a few million bucks worth of it.

All that said above you guys sure Quantum Computers cant decrypt Bitcoin  ?

Look, there is nothing to decrypt in Bitcoin. Nothing on Bitcoin is encrypted, or at least by design. It is possible to store encrypted strings on it but that is not the question here. Quantum computers will eventually crack ECDSA or asymmetric cryptography, which basically means all the cryptography that we're using for security online. Which also means thousands of terabytes of sensitive data that the governments would love to get... Don't you think it is far more worth it to get those than to get a couple of Bitcoins?

Point is, quantum computers will be very expensive to use and potentially fairly unstable at the earlier stages. We're still decades away. But by then, we would've introduced alternative schemes and adopt them to largely mitigate the threat of it, at least. Pre-emptive measures are always possible.

The last bitcoins wont be mined till 2140. Satoshi is a mathematician more than a computer scientist and when he did the bitcoin whitepaper he probably didn't know or heard of what quantum computers are at the time.

I can assure you Quantum Computers will be mainstream way before that.

Cryptography is Encryption hence the word 'Cryptography'. Even the whatsapp app claims to be cryptography as it encrypts message between sender and receiver. Cryptography means hiding the message between sender & receiver. The only way to hide it now is Encryption so hackers cant see your messages.

The only prevention safe measure that i can see of bitcoin in the the future is the Bitcoin 'Quant' Hard Fork or Layer 2 Solution. Renaming Bitcoin to Bitqoin with a q yeah I know sounds crazy.

Hackers might just attack bitcoin with quantum computers not for money but for fun.

Just imagine a teenage hacker having a quantum computer in his bedroom right now. Hes the only hacker with a quantum computer in the world. He can turn the world upside down and cause so much chaos worldwide as 90% of the world is run on computers now so yeah its not just bitcoin quantum hackers will go after.

[Fortify]

There's a couple of interesting white papers to read:

https://arqit-res.cloudinary.com/image/upload/v1627024109/Assessment_of_Quantum_Threat_To_Bitcoin_and_Derives_Cyrptocurrencies_nrp6iq.pdf

https://arqit-res.cloudinary.com/image/upload/v1627369111/Digital_assets_The_security_problem__yya4bn.pdf


So Quantum Computers will be available to buy in the shops in lets say 10 years time from now and 5 years from now the first commercial business grade quantum computers will be available for sale for businesses.

Quantum computers can get anyone's private keys in fraction of a second.

The few quantum computers in the world today owned by the Big tech giants such as google, Microsoft, even china has one is used to harvest all that data from billions of people to a single point Ai. These quantum computers are massive, require a lot of cooling and are power hungry that require nuclear reactors to run them. But these are the 1st generation quantum computers.

Eventually these quantum computers will get smaller, more efficient to run off the electricity in your home and everyone will have quantum computer in their bedrooms when they hit the shelves in shops or on Amazon online in 10 years time but at a crazy price tag so not everyone can afford one in 10 years time but they will get cheaper and become mainstream especially with gamers for obvious reasons. Playing fortnite at crazy 16k resolution at million frames per second.

So how can Bitcoin survive in this technological quantum era? The B in Bitcoin stands for Bits. Quantum computing is Qubits meaning it can be a binary 1 or 0 at the same time similarly like a light switch being on or off at the same time that sounds crazy and impossible.

Will there be Qitcoin or somewhat?

"The public" are most likely to be the last people to ever get hold of this sort of technology. The very richest private investors and institutions, if not governments, are the ones driving this technology to the very edge of it's capabilities right now. Ironically that sort of computing power should be able to create defenses against hackers so unless they somehow get access to a separate control interface then it is unlikely they'll be able to do much nefarious with it either. Eventually computing power will be able to overwhelm the defenses of current technology, but you have to wonder whether Bitcoin or other financial services will be able to adapt to an emerging threat more quickly - if it is even possible to defend against, as 2-factor authentication and limiting access attempts might be required.

[ranochigo]

The last bitcoins wont be mined till 2140. Satoshi is a mathematician more than a computer scientist and when he did the bitcoin whitepaper he probably didn't know or heard of what quantum computers are at the time.

Doubt so. Even if he did, QCs were too far away of a threat that it still made sense to use ECDSA.

I can assure you Quantum Computers will be mainstream way before that.

Maybe. Who knows?

Cryptography is Encryption hence the word 'Cryptography'. Even the whatsapp app claims to be cryptography as it encrypts message between sender and receiver. Cryptography means hiding the message between sender & receiver. The only way to hide it now is Encryption so hackers cant see your messages.

It is a misnomer. Definition of cryptography, as specified in RFC2828 states that; The mathematical science that deals with transforming data to render its meaning unintelligible (i.e., to hide its semantic content), prevent its undetected alteration, or prevent its unauthorized use. If the transformation is reversible,cryptography also deals with restoring encrypted data to intelligible form.

Cue the bolded part which concerns Bitcoin. If you disagree, please highlight the part in Bitcoin that would prove otherwise.

Just imagine a teenage hacker having a quantum computer in his bedroom right now. Hes the only hacker with a quantum computer in the world. He can turn the world upside down and cause so much chaos worldwide as 90% of the world is run on computers now so yeah its not just bitcoin quantum hackers will go after.

Yes.

[tyz]

Quantum computers can get anyone's private keys in fraction of a second.

This is a very common misconception. It is true that many of the encryption algorithms currently in use are quite vulnerable to quantum computing. But there are already some that are built in such a way that quantum computers cannot crack them. Research into this has increased enormously in recent years.

[ChiBitCTy]

The whole quantum computer debate has been around for some time, and something I remember an Uber driving to tell me about one time.  He was going on and on about how bitcoin will be taken down by quantum computing etc.  However it seems like no one take in to consideration that the blockchain is programmable and there will be ways for the Devs to update the blockchain.  I'm not sold on Quantum being a huge deal at all.

[Hydrogen]

The day we "get" quantum computers, is the day we "get" quantum ASIC miners to balance the equation.

Tech firms seeking to develop quantum computers need funding and resources. That's where "5 to 10 years" comes from. They exaggerate and make overambitious and overzealous promises to attract investors. The technology will likely never become a reality. It shows in the 5-10 year estimate that they have no real blueprint or roadmap.

Anyone who looks into the specifics of claims made by "quantum computer developers" will see many different forms of sketchy and shady behavior. That are not found in legit peer reviewed research.

[concept2]

Quantum computers can get anyone's private keys in fraction of a second.

No, they can't.

Quantum computers can exponentially speed up solving the discrete logarithm problem, but can only linearly speed up finding a collision for a hash. What this means in practice is that they are only useful for brute forcing private keys in which the attacker knows the public key. Given that you public key is only revealed when you make a transaction, sign a message, or otherwise choose to share it, then if you only ever send bitcoin to brand new addresses which you never reuse and never share the public key of, then your bitcoin is 100% safe. A quantum attacker cannot obtain a private key only from knowledge of the address.

Further, quantum computers aren't an "all or nothing" thing. Sure, the first quantum computer might hit the market in a decade, but it will be inefficient and have a very small number of qubits. It would still take thousands of years to crack a single private key. It will be centuries before quantum computers reach the stage that they can reverse a public key to a private key in a "fraction of a second".

At some point, bitcoin will fork to a quantum resistant algorithm.

Thanks for the knowledge. As far as I know, there are several quantum computer (or I should call quantum processor) in the world right now and they have been proven to solve problems which can only be done by them (quantum supremacy). But it is true that only some specific field that quantum computers are faster than supercomputer

Well, quantum algorithm might be the solution when there are thousands of quantum computer existing. They will surely enhance the strength of bitcoin and its private key

[ranochigo]

Thanks for the knowledge. As far as I know, there are several quantum computer (or I should call quantum processor) in the world right now and they have been proven to solve problems which can only be done by them (quantum supremacy). But it is true that only some specific field that quantum computers are faster than supercomputer

Well, quantum algorithm might be the solution when there are thousands of quantum computer existing. They will surely enhance the strength of bitcoin and its private key

They aren't true quantum computers. The number of qubits isn't of any significance if they cannot be used to achieve what we need. The current quantum computers that you see, ie. by DWave claims to have a fairly high qubit but the technology that they're using to achieve it is quantum annealing. Quantum annealing cannot run Shor's algorithm to achieve the exponential decrease in the time taken. They are used for entirely different applications, universal gate QCs are the ones which are of concern.

[faithupgrade]

This is a very interesting article. It is also scary as we do not know if these computers are capable of exploiting the blockchain or by making sabotage the mining industry by creating 51% attack. We do not what will happen next. But I doubt their claim of getting anyone's private key in a fraction of seconds.

There's a couple of interesting white papers to read:

https://arqit-res.cloudinary.com/image/upload/v1627024109/Assessment_of_Quantum_Threat_To_Bitcoin_and_Derives_Cyrptocurrencies_nrp6iq.pdf

https://arqit-res.cloudinary.com/image/upload/v1627369111/Digital_assets_The_security_problem__yya4bn.pdf


So Quantum Computers will be available to buy in the shops in lets say 10 years time from now and 5 years from now the first commercial business grade quantum computers will be available for sale for businesses.

Quantum computers can get anyone's private keys in fraction of a second.

The few quantum computers in the world today owned by the Big tech giants such as google, Microsoft, even china has one is used to harvest all that data from billions of people to a single point Ai. These quantum computers are massive, require a lot of cooling and are power hungry that require nuclear reactors to run them. But these are the 1st generation quantum computers.

Eventually these quantum computers will get smaller, more efficient to run off the electricity in your home and everyone will have quantum computer in their bedrooms when they hit the shelves in shops or on Amazon online in 10 years time but at a crazy price tag so not everyone can afford one in 10 years time but they will get cheaper and become mainstream especially with gamers for obvious reasons. Playing fortnite at crazy 16k resolution at million frames per second.

So how can Bitcoin survive in this technological quantum era? The B in Bitcoin stands for Bits. Quantum computing is Qubits meaning it can be a binary 1 or 0 at the same time similarly like a light switch being on or off at the same time that sounds crazy and impossible.

Will there be Qitcoin or somewhat?

[NotFuzzyWarm]

Willing to bet that we will be seeing the exact same subject line for posts 10 years from now 
In short - not gonna happen in this decade. From the research articles I've read we are still a long way from running any sort of complex programs that go beyond simple math exercises.

[o_e_l_e_o]

The day we "get" quantum computers, is the day we "get" quantum ASIC miners to balance the equation.

Quantum ASICs don't protect against quantum computers attacking individual key pairs, though. If we ever get to the stage where quantum computers can solve the discrete logarithm problem in a reasonable amount of time and calculate a private key from a known public key, then it doesn't matter what hardware is securing the network - we will need to fork away from ECDSA to a quantum resistant algorithm. This is entirely doable, and for most people would simply mean moving their coins to a new address type, as we have already done with segwit.

And even when we finally get a quantum computer capable of breaking ECDSA, it will still take it weeks or months to reverse a single public key. It will be decades more before they are fast enough and powerful enough to do so in <1 hour and consider attacking a public key which has only been revealed for the first time when a transaction has been made.

[kaggie]

On the contrary, around 2030, Hackers or Governments using Quantum Computers will not harm Bitcoin but do good that is recover all the lost millions of Bitcoins in dead dormant btc addresses that have been gathering dust never recovered. If that could happen then that would be a good thing right as it will satisfy the btc demand at that time. But then again if this happens then it will stop demand and crash the btc price right  

This is not a good thing. First, it would be stealing from those people. There is no guarantee that any of them have lost access, no matter what people believe. Very early bitcoin was filled with tinkerers and people who believed in its vision. If you put a key into cold storage for 10-20 years, then should others be allowed to take it?

Second, it would make bitcoin useless. If there is no security and ability to verify owners with private keys, then there is no bitcoin and no cryptocurrency. It removes a significant independent voice within finance.

As for whether it's possible, bitcoin uses two algorithms for signing. While private-public key pairs will be more easily determined, I believe that segwit resolves this by obscuring the public keys behind hashes, which hashing function is much more efficiently solved by non-quantum computers -- and still takes quite a long time. This does mean that the owners of very dormant addresses may have limited time to move their keys to new addresses if the public key is known, but it should provide no difference to addresses without publicly known keys.

[Kakmakr]

OP, tell me something.....

You are saying that there are a few quantum computers in existence today... So tell us, how many of these quantum computers have successfully acquired even 1 Private Key? This would have been blasted on all news media platforms ..if that was true.... but it is not true. It is not as if it is not productive to do this, because 1 000 000 of Satoshi's coins are still out there... so if they can do this, then they can cash in on a major treasure.

Even if they are successful ..some time in the future, then developers will fork to a new coin with stronger encryption and people will just shift their coins or use the new forked coins. (Full nodes will just be too happy to allow this, because it will protect their coins) 

[o_e_l_e_o]

As for whether it's possible, bitcoin uses two algorithms for signing. While private-public key pairs will be more easily determined, I believe that segwit resolves this by obscuring the public keys behind hashes

All addresses, be they legacy or segwit, are derived from hashes of the public key. It is only very early transactions which used P2PK - pay to pub key - which do not use hashes of the public key and would be inherently vulnerable to quantum computers. All addresses in current use are only vulnerable if they have already made an outgoing transaction and therefore revealed their public key.

[masterrex]

I think it is a very interesting topic that needs to be discussed further and it would be useful if there is a resource person who was knowledgeable enough about quantum computers. Anyway base on the reply's above many tech-savvy forum users are sharing their knowledge about quantum computers so it's a very useful OP,

Anyway, IMO, If quantum supremacy was already achieved ( because I doubt it personally) I think they need much time to improve it and develop further to make them more powerful enough to crack even a single private key, sounds futuristic right? but believe me, it is not an easy task to do. thats why I believe it has no reason to be alarmed about quantum computers.

[momchilandonov]

They will difinetly have access to them in 10-15 years or so. And I dont know what we all wil do about encriptions in our life

[zanezane]

All addresses, be they legacy or segwit, are derived from hashes of the public key. It is only very early transactions which used P2PK - pay to pub key - which do not use hashes of the public key and would be inherently vulnerable to quantum computers. All addresses in current use are only vulnerable if they have already made an outgoing transaction and therefore revealed their public key.

But wouldn't the quantum computers be able to decipher the hash of those private keys? Because they're made to make calculations that could last for about a million years to be solved shortened in a matter of seconds, will it be a threat?