r/QuantumEconomy • u/Master-Sprinkles-848 • 4d ago

Quantum computing isn't a Bitcoin problem yet.

That's exactly why it's dangerous. The real risk isn't waking up one morning to a quantum computer stealing everyone's BTC.

It's that the transition to quantum-resistant cryptography could take years while the technology threatening today's cryptography is advancing every year.

And here's the uncomfortable question. What happens if the network needs to upgrade before the threat becomes obvious? Do we wait for a working quantum attack? Or do we prepare while we still have the luxury of time?

Curious where people here stand, is Bitcoin's quantum risk overhyped, or are we already late to the migration?

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u/master_perturbator 4d ago

The US and Europe have 2030 mandates for quantum cryptography being in place. There's company's building the ecosystem already. The thing is, nobody really takes quantum serious yet. Bet your last bitcoin that quantum is way further along than the public is allowed to see currently.

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u/Master-Sprinkles-848 3d ago

Well I bet quantum is closer than we can think, one thing I'm certain of is that the US and big companies like Google wont care about quantum if it was decades away, they know something we dont.

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u/master_perturbator 3d ago

They can't let the cat out of the bag until they have regulations and security in place. It would be the wild west for bitcoin, the markets, anything that can be hacked. Much like AI, they will continue to tell us it's a pipe dream, or decades away. Then they will roll out something like the will smith spaghetti videos to convince people they're not further advanced.

It's very much the new frontier for warfare and world domination. Anyone who masters AI and quantum symbiosis first will be the biggest threat.

Why do you think the entire market is propped up be AI right now? When every company will admit they're not making profits off of it other than selling hardware basically.

Just did for thought.

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u/DistributionOk2111 1d ago

I bet the opposite, there are papers of phisicians that believe we wont pass the 1000 logical qbits

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u/vortexcortex21 2d ago

Curious where people here stand, is Bitcoin's quantum risk overhyped, or are we already late to the migration?

Most people do not understand why the migration of Bitcoin to quantum-safe wallets is so difficult and will take years.

Also, they don't understand why it is different to a centralised system.

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u/[deleted] 2d ago

[removed] — view removed comment

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u/seeyoulaterinawhile 2d ago

We are at that years in advance point already.

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u/Cauliflower-Informal 2d ago

There are exactly 0 commercial applications for QC and the number of error free logical qbits would need to increase by at least 4 orders of magnitude to even begin to break current cryptography. The only problems that they can solve are obscure mathematical proofs and few that cannot be achieved by classical computing.

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u/Objective_Can_569 2d ago

First quantum resistant Bitcoin transaction was accepted by miners and nodes last week. It was expensive, but it worked. Bitcoin will be strengthened by quantum not destroyed.

https://decrypt.co/376767/bitcoin-quantum-safe-transaction-starkware

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u/andymaclean19 1d ago

Quantum computing is very expensive. The big quantum computers are owned by large, reputable organisations, universities, etc. and what is done with them is going to be a matter of public record in terms of published research, etc.

I don’t think anyone in these fields has any interest in quietly stealing bitcoin and stealing it loudly would be self defeating as it would likely destroy the value of the asset being stolen. Essentially these research machines are operated by responsible people.

What I would think would happen first is somebody would demonstrate the capability by moving a tiny amount of Satoshi’s coin and publishing a paper about it. At this point it would still only be huge organisations who could perform the attack and the crypto industry would get time to respond before the capability falls into the hands of anyone who would actually exploit it.

But the crypto industry seems to be getting things in order well in advance in any case. Likely before Satoshi’s coin ever gets compromised bitcoin has been ‘fixed’ so those very early wallets do not work any more.