It is fascinating. I am glad you posted this, because I was about to post a thread on this. Had not heard about the threat to crypto from quantum computers in probably a decade, but quantum technology seems to be making major(?) breakthroughs, recently.
Google recently announced they had developed "
time crystals," which from my dumbed down interpretation are basically quantum transistors. The problem with quantum computers is that their current "transistors" decay rapidly, are hard to manufacturer and have to be replaced frequently. Time crystals solve both of these problems and potentially make quantum computers a reality. (
Don't be evil) Google is the LAST company I would want making these discoveries.
Then again, they have been talking about quantum computing probably before I was born, so who knows how close they really are. But the concern is real if governments were able to develop these machines or have already done so.
China already has a quantum computer?The news comes after China announced in late 2020 it had achieved 'quantum supremacy' with the development of a photon powered quantum computer.
The Chinese computer is called Jiuzhang and was designed by scientist, Chao-Yang Lu and is said to have the potential to solve mathematical problems in seconds that the worlds fastest conventional computer, Japans Fugaku, would take an estimated 600 million years to solve.
China, a country hostile to Bitcoin, Ethereum and decentralised finance cryptocurrencies, could potentially undermine the encryption used to store transactions used in blockchain ledgers if their quantum computer becomes more developed.
Quantum computing could also lay bare private communications, company data, military secrets and obliterate digital banking records.
Quantum computing could utilise the strange effects of quantum mechanics, such as superposition and entanglement, and accelerate the speed by which a quantum computer can solve certain problems, such as hacking encrypted communications in seconds.
The good news is, encryption can and will evolve.
Quantum computers can get anyone's private keys in fraction of a second.
Further, quantum computers aren't an "all or nothing" thing. Sure, the first quantum computer might hit the market in a decade, but it will be inefficient and have a very small number of qubits. It would still take thousands of years to crack a single private key. It will be centuries before quantum computers reach the stage that they can reverse a public key to a private key in a "fraction of a second".
Good to know. What about the hashing algorithm itself? Could it hijack mining?
