Quantum Computer.

[TinEye]

The quantum computers you are thinking of are in realms of deep science fiction. You don't have to worry about it in the forseeable future.

Not really, they are in the realm of near-future science fiction. See http://www.computerworld.com/s/article/9249721/Money_talks_and_that_s_all_quantum_maker_D_Wave_has_to_say

No, they are not. Right now they just send some photons in a lab. Functioning quantum computers are several decades away.

[HarmonLi]

Guys i wanted to discuss about quantum computers, How will they affect BTC

1st thing is that these computers will be 1000s of times faster than the current super computer so my question is what will happen to the difficulty if it rises like a rocket then the price of BTC will also rise like a rocket?

2nd thing is hacking, When these computers get to the consumer market won't hacking become a problem?

Edit: One more question will this also mean the 21 million bitcoins will be made faster?

For now i have got these points i will edit as the post progresses.

1000s of times faster than current super computers is still slow compared to ASICs. People really don't seem to get how making an integrated circuit that's optimized for doing exactly one thing speeds things up. Doesn't matter.
It'll only mine the 21 million bitcoin faster if new hashing power keeps coming online, or the difficulty will adjust too fast!

[Ayers]

bitcoin private key will remain safe, in term of how much a quantum computer is faster, it is like making the square root of a number, so 256 bit become 128, which is unbreakable, public key could see some issue as they are 128 bit, but they are revealed only if you make a transaction(if i'm not mistaken, so as long as you only receive you are safe

[sandykho47]

1. if quantum computer is sold to public. Bitcoin price will down because too much mined, and difficult will rise up extremely
2. hacking will never resolved, because nothing are perfect  
3. of course we can see 21000000 BTC faster  

i think bitcoin need to change from SHA-256 to something much more harder to mined
and crack wallet.dat / private key will 1000x faster

[Mobius]

Edit: One more question will this also mean the 21 million bitcoins will be made faster?

A quantum computer is not necessary for this to happen. The fact that the difficulty is increasing at a rapid rate means that, on average blocks are found less then every 10 minutes. The answer to your question is "yes" the 21 million BTC will be made faster, but this will not be because of quantum computers, it will be because of ASICs.

[Kipsy89]

Guys i wanted to discuss about quantum computers, How will they affect BTC

1st thing is that these computers will be 1000s of times faster than the current super computer so my question is what will happen to the difficulty if it rises like a rocket then the price of BTC will also rise like a rocket?

2nd thing is hacking, When these computers get to the consumer market won't hacking become a problem?

Edit: One more question will this also mean the 21 million bitcoins will be made faster?

For now i have got these points i will edit as the post progresses.

Woah man, really 1000 times faster than those super computers? I bet they could do a pretty big 110% attack on the Bitcoin network. Why don't they steal the Bitcoins and profit? I mean, they shouldn't do it, but I just want to make sure this won't happen... Better sell my Bitcoins?

[HarmonLi]

1. if quantum computer is sold to public. Bitcoin price will down because too much mined, and difficult will rise up extremely
2. hacking will never resolved, because nothing are perfect  
3. of course we can see 21000000 BTC faster  

i think bitcoin need to change from SHA-256 to something much more harder to mined
and crack wallet.dat / private key will 1000x faster

Doesn't matter. 1000x faster isn't that much. It's still nothing compared to the maximum difficulty Bitcoin could achieve. People don't get how incredibly high the number 2^256 is. You just can't even count to that number! Not even with the fastest supercomputer in the world!!!

[wasserman99]

1. if quantum computer is sold to public. Bitcoin price will down because too much mined, and difficult will rise up extremely
2. hacking will never resolved, because nothing are perfect  
3. of course we can see 21000000 BTC faster  

i think bitcoin need to change from SHA-256 to something much more harder to mined
and crack wallet.dat / private key will 1000x faster

Doesn't matter. 1000x faster isn't that much. It's still nothing compared to the maximum difficulty Bitcoin could achieve. People don't get how incredibly high the number 2^256 is. You just can't even count to that number! Not even with the fastest supercomputer in the world!!!

There is no effective maximum difficulty that BTC can have. ASICs will always be the most efficient way to mine BTC and they present the same kind of threats the OP is talking about but they are n/a because ASICs are available to the public and are somewhat decentralized.

[coinits]

If quantum computers really going to exist, we will need to update our crypto protocols to stronger ones(SHA-1024)?

But the same crypto technology still can be used, so we will only need some adaptation after the panic wave

They already exist at about $10 million per unit. The CIA and Bezos are invested heavily in the only company making them. A Canadian Company: http://www.dwavesys.com/

[counter]

The quantum computers you are thinking of are in realms of deep science fiction. You don't have to worry about it in the forseeable future.

By the time they come BTC might even have gone Netscape's way.

It is my understanding that they only increase in speed and power faster and faster so basically more and more ground is gained then the previous day technologically speaking that it.  I can only imagine at some point they would play a role and more then many people seem to think.

[asdlolciterquit]

Guys i wanted to discuss about quantum computers, How will they affect BTC

1st thing is that these computers will be 1000s of times faster than the current super computer so my question is what will happen to the difficulty if it rises like a rocket then the price of BTC will also rise like a rocket?

2nd thing is hacking, When these computers get to the consumer market won't hacking become a problem?

Edit: One more question will this also mean the 21 million bitcoins will be made faster?

For now i have got these points i will edit as the post progresses.

i've never thought this! anyways, quantum computers will not be here until 10 years...

[Mobius]

If quantum computers really going to exist, we will need to update our crypto protocols to stronger ones(SHA-1024)?

But the same crypto technology still can be used, so we will only need some adaptation after the panic wave

They already exist at about $10 million per unit. The CIA and Bezos are invested heavily in the only company making them. A Canadian Company: http://www.dwavesys.com/

ASICs will always be much more efficient then any quantum computer will be. Since quantum computers can likely do many tasks it will be less efficient then a machine that can do one task only.

[freedomno1]

Have you tried searching the forum? There is already a wealth of information available on this topic.

Yep pretty much already came to the conclusion that its a Schrodinger cat
It's destroyed and yet not destroyed at the same time ^_^.

[Razick]

Even if they breake the first encryption of bitcoin, which I think it has 3, the other 2 will be strong enough for the hacker won't be able to steal your coins, however, if you send your coins to another wallet, the hacker would be able to figure your private key and then your wallet security would be compromised.
So, every time that you send your coins to an address, you'll have to send all of your coins to another one, and keep doing that forever.

That's what I've read in some article around here.

If you read the Bitcoin Magazine article, it's really a bit worse than that. We need to address this issue long before it becomes an issue.

[Razick]

Edit: One more question will this also mean the 21 million bitcoins will be made faster?

A quantum computer is not necessary for this to happen. The fact that the difficulty is increasing at a rapid rate means that, on average blocks are found less then every 10 minutes. The answer to your question is "yes" the 21 million BTC will be made faster, but this will not be because of quantum computers, it will be because of ASICs.

The strength of ASICS has nothing to do with it. It's the cryptography that is threatened, not the mining network.

As for the OP's original question about faster mining, no. The difficulty rate rises as the hash rate rises to keep block creation steady.

[PenAndPaper]

Quantum computers will affect bitcoin the same way teleportation or time travel will do.

[Razick]

Quantum computers will affect bitcoin the same way teleportation or time travel will do.

Quantum computers are real.

[doubleredrolex]

Quantum computers will affect bitcoin the same way teleportation or time travel will do.

Quantum computers are real.

So is time travel and teleportation. Quantum computers are just closer to becoming reality. And quantum computers arent really measured as 1000x faster.. instead of doing calculations really quickly one at a time, the quantum computer does all the calculations at the same time. Or something to that effect. It will be exponentially faster than anything we have today. Theres some good videos on Youtube that explain it.

[Cortex7]

Enumeration is not needed in a quantum computer, as @doubleredrolex says, in an X qbit register, all 2^X bit states can occur at once in "superposition".

D-Wave has an array of raw qbits, but reading the state gives a very fuzzy statistical answer and the fuzziness scales with it, so the more complex the architecture, the more useless it becomes. The best you can do with such a system is reduce the problem space, but not nail down an answer, it is useless for hard spiky (logical) problem spaces.

However a "logical qbit" has a fully deterministic read/write.

A logical qbit is formed from a collection of raw qbits in an error correcting surface code topology:

http://arxiv.org/ftp/arxiv/papers/1208/1208.0928.pdf

Large scale general purpose architectures and also application specific systems (quantum ASIC) could be made using logical qbits.

Interestingly (and somewhat off topic) similar error correcting code topologies have been found in string theory in the very fabric of our own reality:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=q1LCVknKUJ4

[RedDiamond]

It is possible to  build a quantum computer inside a diamond: http://techland.time.com/2012/04/10/meet-the-quantum-computer-inside-a-diamond-does-it-run-forever/