Post
Topic
Board Development & Technical Discussion
Re: Bitcoin must upgrade or fall victim to quantum computing in 5 years
by
philipma1957
on 10/07/2025, 19:36:28 UTC
I'm not saying the quantum apocalypse will happen tomorrow, but I also don't think it's wise to live as if it's impossible in the coming years. If your wealth depends on the assumption that no one is making significant progress behind closed doors, that's already a serious vulnerability.
You are probably trying to promote some shitcoin judging from the second part of the post, but I concede you the benefit of the doubt for now and answer, also to prevent newbies getting scared from your post.

What you forget is that there is a way to protect your coins already: Do not reuse your addresses. Above all if they're meant for cold storage.

As I wrote above, there's discussion in the mailing list, there has been a draft BIP already, and at least some of the Bitcoin developers are open for changes. But if the current research on post-quantum cryptography is simply not mature enough, then it doesn't make sense to hurry up just because there's a 0,001% probability of someone stealing some old P2PK coins in the next 10 years.

A hack of a single Satoshi-era address, or two or three, in the next 10 years would not be the apocalypse, it would be a hack like any other. If that happens, then it's really time to upgrade, but that's some time away still.

The technology evolution needed between the scenario "crack a P2PK key from Satoshi's era in 1 year" and "crack a key in 10 minutes while the transaction is in the mempool" is huge. And only if this happens, the strategy of not reusing addresses isn't enough anymore and Bitcoin needs to upgrade.

if I could crack btc sha-256

 I likely could crack crypto  used for banks.

so all crypto would be at issue.

as I understand it quantum is not the right math to do this.  But I am only fair at math.