(CryptoGlobe) A now-deleted Medium post hypothesized that the 3 million bitcoin still left to mine could be extracted by Google’s Sycamore in under than 2 seconds.
However, the since-deleted post got a few things wrong. First, the calculation made by the author suggested that 1 BTC was produced every 10 minutes. This is wrong. In actuality, the network currently yields 12.5 BTC approximately every 10 minutes. This miscalculation alone would throw the theory out to some degree already.
There are other glaring omissions. The post fails to include the difficult readjustment which occurs every 2016 blocks. If a quantum computer did manage to mine all 2016 blocks, the network would simply adjust the difficulty, bottlenecking Sycamore’s further attempts. Still, in reality, the likelihood of bitcoin network being able to produce a difficulty setting of this level is improbable.
Nevertheless, the author is right in a sense. Any attempt from a quantum computer to mine BTC could credibly result in the denigration of the network. This is because a difficulty level set to match quantum computer would make it so that only another — more powerful machine — would be able to compete to mine the remaining BTC.
Bitcoin Only a Part of Bigger Problem for Cryptography
Andreas Antonopolous, a bitcoin advocate who has been relatively vocal on this subject, suggests that bitcoin is not the issue we should be worried about. “. .we have a much bigger problem. The bigger problem we have is that the entire world’s classified communications, confidential communications, financial systems etc, all depend on cryptography today.”