Ryan Sean Adams (rsa.eth)
@rsa.eth
Will Quantum kill Bitcoin? just recorded a podcast with quantum computing legend scott aaronson and cryptographer @drakefjustin 7 takeaways: 1) quantum computers that break current bitcoin & ethereum cryptography are simply a matter of when not if - it's now just a matter of engineering and scale 2) if quantum computers with millions of qubits happened overnight bitcoin & ethereum would be wrecked - attackers could steal trillions in assets and generally god mode both chains - fortunately we still have years until this is possible 3) but when that day comes bitcoin is in for a rough ride - not on the tech layer but on the social - "the community" will have to make a call on bitcoin property rights - no clear path to dealing with the 1 to 4m btc that can be stolen by the quantum attacks (5-20% of all bitcoin lost/inactive cannot be upgraded) - does bitcoin let this happen or breach its immutable property rights - which is least bad for number go up? do we fork?
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Ryan Sean Adams (rsa.eth)
@rsa.eth
4) after this there's still the question of PoW - is PoW sustainable in a quantum world or will a new hashing algo be required? 5) ethereum will need to be upgraded too but the path is more clear - likely no property rights impacts and no PoW concerns - achievable, but a large multi-year undertaking 6) not even experts know how soon quantum will happen - likely not in the next 5 years - but if we get a fast takeoff or slow is anybody's guess - it seems likely we'll have time to react as the qubits rachet up...but maybe not much 7) finally it's absolutely wild that there's a multi-trillion dollar worldwide bounty available to the first empire that can build a computer powerful enough to snatch it - enough to incent hundreds of billions of dollars into quantum computing - and yet this trillion dollar treasure could all evaporate into nothing if the social consensus of core devs and full node running bitcoiners so choose how the heck do we price all this in?? what a weird timeline episode monday
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Cassie Heart
@cassie
Why would Bitcoin's PoW be impacted by quantum? SHA-256 does not have quantum attacks that are better than classical attacks, as i understand it
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Ryan Sean Adams (rsa.eth)
@rsa.eth
Both Scott and Justin discuss it in episode!
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