(DailyHodl) The Daily Hodl staff summarizes Andres Fursman’s recent video in which he warns that the massive computational potential of quantum machines could be capable of compromising Bitcoin’s security. The video is also included for viewing.
Fursman argues that regardless of when quantum computers come of age, a solution needs to be found.
“Whether quantum computers come out tomorrow or in five years or in ten years, they are capable of being cryptographically useful. , , ,
So it’s worth kind of getting into what are the different ways that the blockchains rely on cryptography, and which of those are specifically relevant to the things that quantum computers of the future might do. And how much is that really a problem for people today, versus not a problem at all? And what things are maybe not a problem yet but we might want to be thinking about working on? Better to be safe than sorry.”
While Fursman says that quantum machines may place Bitcoin’s cryptography in jeopardy, he notes that it will not happen anytime soon.
“We might need actually significantly more qubits (quantum bits, or a unit of quantum information) than are currently available. .. . ..So if we need a thousand times more qubits then we might have in a few years, you sort of have to be thinking about the growth of these things from both the error correction standpoint and the number of logical qubits that you need to go forward…. .. .. So we are definitely, we are not right around the corner from this. It’s not going to happen next week.”
Is Quantum Computing Placing Bitcoin In Danger?
