Quote from: FreeMoney on April 24, 2011, 09:39:51 AM

Just so no one freaks out. Encryption systems don't break all at once and we can move to a different one when needed.

I'd gathered that would be the case. It's a little off-topic but only having a basic understanding of hashing and cryptography it's something I've wondered a while, given the low cost of modern storage and Internet bandwidth why are the increases in bit length over time somewhat incremental and not something huge like 8192 bits / 1K?

I can understand for high-traffic things like SSL and things that need hardware acceleration, but for applications like signing a single document, encrypting small but important documents and generating things like bitcoins where the difficulty is being manipulated to make it harder as time goes on I never really understood why it wouldn't be done?