Let me start this off by saying I am heavily invested in bitcoin and I am practically obsessively mentally invested in it so I am not trying to spread fud. Anyways here is my question.

What would we do if there was a flaw in the way that adresses are created? Is there a way to change the cryptography that is behind the pub/private key if it is found to be flawed or as time goes on and computing power gets more powerful? And isn't this a serious concern? This isn't an if question... this is a when question. And if we haven't moved past this form of cryptography before the weakness is found or before computers are able to just out pace it then bitcoin loses all of it's security and becomes worthless. But then there's the problem of what cryptography do we use to replace it right? How do we know that it's secure? New cryptographic schemes havent lived up to as much scrutiny as older schemes so there could very easily be a flaw that just hasn't been found yet. Is it actually possible to change the way adresses are generated and how would they adapt the bitcoin to go to those new addresses? I was hoping you could explain these things to me or perhaps point me to a wiki page or an article that addresses these concerns.

Now these concerns seem to me that this arms race will eventually wind up killing bitcoin. It seems like eventually it just has to happen that a flaw in the cryptography will be discovered before they can prevent the damage and that will kill bitcoin. It seems like it just comes with the teritory. Do you think that it is possible to permanently stay on the winning end of this arms race? Like even if the current gen cryptography weakens at a predictable rate and we are able to move to something that can replace it all it takes is 1 instance of cryptographical failure at any point before they are able to respond to cause this entire system to come crashing down.


if my understanding is flawed please say so. thanks!