Hey, guys. This year I became seriously interested in quantum computers. I came across here a study of Australian and Singaporean scientists about the security of Bitcoin:
https://arxiv.org/pdf/1710.10377v1.pdf There are a lot of figures and formulas in the report, I haven't understood everything, but the main idea I've caught is that if Bitcoin doesn't implement post-quantum algorithms, it won't survive until 2027.
Currently, I'm thinking hard about how I could minimize the risks - all of the sudden, it may be true about quantum computers. What do you think, guys?
Maybe, there are already some projects that make a crypto with post-quantum protection? I think it should be implemented in Bitcoin blockchain
Yes, Bitcoin is vulnerable to a quantum attack. The most vulnerable are the coins with published pubkeys. It's about 4 millions bitcoins, that will be hacked and sold at the exchanges, that will crash the price to 0$. Coins at one-time addresses are vulnerable too, because when a holder spends them, an attacker has about 10 minutes to crack private key and perform a double spending. SHA-256 mining is vulnerable too (Grover's algorithm). See how we solve these problems in the Bitcoin Post-Quantum fork that will happen at block 555000: