Can Quantum Computers Hack Bitcoin?!?

So, when can a quantum computer destroy bitcoin?

Or can it at all?

And if it can, when should we really start worrying?

BTC: 3QhHP4484pfGvhRcKNiNc8VeAWSzUuvNrZ
ETH: 0xD40c70e90eDca6E2114F8EbCa4084f3e51Ba7b6C

In this video, I'm going to talk about quantum computings potential impact on bitcoin.

There's two things that people are concerned about. The mining, and the transactions.

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0:00 Can quantum computers break bitcoin?
0:27 The blockchain & mining
1:07 Can quantum computers mine bitcoin faster?
3:17 Can quantum computers affect bitcoin transactions?
5:44 Vulnerabilities to quantum computers in BTC - Public Key
6:38 DO NOT REUSE WALLETS
7:16 Attacks during confirmation of transactions
8:34 Lost Private Keys
9:28 Post quantum cryptography
10:19 How many qubits for quantum computer break bitcoin?
11:05 How long until we have a big enough quantum computer?
12:05 Looking forward to a quantum computing future
12:49 Do I own bitcoin?




Chart/Tweet on Bitcoin private keys:

Can quantum computers mine bitcoin faster?

Quantum computers do not "brute force" SHA-256 faster, or parallelize the process more. There is no known quantum algorithm that can "undo" SHA-256 hashing to "guess" the correct nonce needed.

Let's say we did discover a quantum algorithm that could figure out this hash faster..

Bitcoin is designed to adjust the difficulty required to mine blocks. So even if that happened, the difficulty would be adjusted.

Of course, if we did have that algorithms, quantum mining was a lot more effective, perhaps only people with quantum computers would have likely have the chance to actually get those coins. It would really depend on the quantum algorithm. This is why mining with just your computer is really not practical at this point, because people are mining with ASICs much more efficiently suited to this problem.

The second part people worry about is how can quantum computers affect the actual spending and transactions of bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies.

Of course, the elliptic curve crytography has been under scrutiny since the quantum computing hype began.

Two of the most common cryptosystems are Rivest–Shamir–Adleman (RSA) and elliptic curve cryptography (ECC). Both of these are vulnerable to attacks by quantum computers. A large enough quantum computer will become a security problem for anyone interacting online.

Bitcoin uses elliptic curve encryption to generate the public key - which is shown publicly - from the private key that authorizes spending.

First, a malicious actor would need to find the public key. While the wallet address is based on the public key, it's hashed by algorithms that currently are not vulnerable to quantum computing attacks. However, during a transaction, the public key is exposed.

However, one mitigation is the hierarchical deterministic wallet, which is now the standard for most mature exchanges. Their wallets allow you to have many wallet addresses. This means that once the private key is used for a transaction, all the coins move, and that key is no longer valid.

However, not all exchanges do this. Some reuse wallet addresses!

If they reuse wallet addresses, the private key can be used again to sign a transaction. That means a transaction long in the past could be used to recover the private key, and then that private key could be used again today to move coins.

Even if we do not reuse addresses, there's an argument to be made that there's still time during the transaction to intercept the coins.

How big does this quantum computer bitcoin killer need to be to actually affect cryptography though? Microsoft Research has shown fewer qubits are needed for computing elliptic curve discrete logarithms – as few as about 2500 for a standard 256-bit key than 2048-bit RSA, which needs 4000. However, these are perfect, "logical" qubits. Because of error correction and other necessary processes, we need many more physical qubits. John Preskill noted in his lecture on quantum information that a 10 million physical and 10,000 logical qubit quantum computer would be needed

Photo/Video credits:

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#bitcoin #cryptocurrency #quantumcomputing

[montanaboobie]

When a quantum computer cracks btc, it will also be able to crack any password of any bank. Even the fed. Btc will be the least of our concerns

[turbulenttimes]

Highly underrated Video, should have millions of views and likes

[allahknowsthebestway]

This aged extremely well, especially with the US printing money like crazy.

And because bitcoin just blowed up and is hovering around $54000 right now.

[terrywalsh]

Found this from a youtube suggestion, 95% of these I turn off inside of 2 minutes. This however was really well delivered (and in the 5%) and you just bagged yourseld another subscriber.

[FutureCoin]

Thanks for highlighting the importance of security in crypto transactions.

[Muskmaga]

who would thumbs down this lol? She just put on a clinic how to make an entertaining and informative video. I liked and subscribed.

[ancientnpc]

Excellent explanation, thanks, subbed. Also why have you not been on Lex Fridman's show yet? You seem like an ideal guest and Im sure Lex would agree.

[philfortner]

It's estimated to take millions of qubits to crack 128bit symmetric encryption. The real problem is the more qubits the more noise that's created so 50 is cleaner than 300...and nowhere near what's needed. Beyond this solving the encryption problem is purely theoretical at this point and more issues will likely be found.

[Biosynchro]

People usually talk about pointless issues like power consumption or the claim that Bitcoin isn't backed by anything. But few people bring up the issue of quantum resistance. Thank you!

[chaitanyap]

This video sounded like research paper. Glad to have find this channel. Thanks for all the information.

[christosnikitopoulos]

Nice video! Well done. Elaborated in vivid detail, learned alot, and subbed for more vids.

P.s. guy with the vendetta mask pressed play on youtube when you were talking about scrambling the message. Thought it was pretty funny haha

[ec]

I had to play this about 12 times to understand it. And even then... But thanks! So interesting!

[mixme]

Should I stop bitcoin? Thank you for your video

[uguree]

Why quantum computing? Do they use complex numbers in the calculations like in electromagnetic waves that's why it is called quantum computing or they give the quantum as it just sounds good?

If first probability above then do they use FFT? Laplace to calculate faster?

[melvinpatomendoza]

How do you get all the bitcoins that is lost due to forgotten password or lost hard drives? Just wondering.. Great video!

[toprakdikici]

This video clarified so many things for me I was anxious that a quantum computer with a right algorithm now could end our encryption but i see it takes way more than...

[henriquefern]

Ray kurzeill said that by 2035 we will achieve universal quantum computer. Is it right, or 2035 is too early? Whats your opinion?

[siriusenergy]

16k subs with just 26 videos! you're channel is skyrocketing relatively speaking ! keep up the momentum

[rylanw]

Processing by electrons is 1s and 0s. Everything is based on mathematics based on those rules. The blockchain scrambles 1s and 0s so much that it can't be figured out but the original message is in and not lost all along the way. Quantum computers aren't interoperable based on their nature unless you create a quantum processor controlled by classical technology thus limited with no information lost between. BUT, it will be centralized and won't be replacing the blockchain or making obsolete an anytime I can foresee on Earth.

[tammycaspe]

Nice insight but as Charles Hoskinson said most people are still not aware of block chain for us to move to quantum computers