Post
Topic
Board Bitcoin Discussion
Re: Do you think quantum computers would break Bitcoin's security?
by
Lauda
on 16/04/2015, 10:34:21 UTC
I don't think that we will be facing a problem 'soon'. If quantum computers break ECDSA (The Elliptic Curve Digital Signature Algorithm) which is used for signing transactions, we might be facing a problem. I'm pretty sure that most members here don't know what happens in this scenario.  If the algorithm gets broken, anyone with a quantum computer could extract a private key from any public key and take the Bitcoin stored on it.

It does look simple doesn't it? Well it's not like that. The thing is that your public key isn't really made public, but your Bitcoin address is rather a hash of it. What I'm saying is that while a quantum computer could get the private key from a public key, it can't derive the public key from your Bitcoin address.

on sha256 security bit are only 128, and quantum computer can break this(i can't find the article), if today pc can break 64 quantum computer can break at least the double of that
so bitcoin will need an hard fork in the future to survive
Stop talking nonsense. Quantum computers can't break SHA256 (used for hashing) without brute forcing it unless a flaw in it has been found. There is no article to link. I'm not saying that someone won't find a way to attack it in the future though.

Bitcoin is SHA256, SHA2 hasn't even been broken yet, once 256 will be broken, the bitcoin algo can change to SHA512 for another 40/50 years Smiley
This is wrong too. While it looks 'simple' it definitely is not. You do realize that changing the hashing algorithm means that all the current mining equipment would become worthless?
If SHA256 gets broken that would cause huge problems. Changing the signing algorithm is much easier than the hashing one, if you look at the big picture.



Technology are developing, everything is possible in the future, maybe Bitcoin will be obsolete in next 100 year, even before all Bicoin were mined.
This is why a better way of upgrading is needed. Hard forks are complicated and there will always be people who think that they know better than the people who are actually working on the software itself.



Note: Finally a decent topic has been made after a while.