kyle-moore's avatar
kyle-moore 2 months ago
Is what Amir Taaki says about it true? That the scale of resources gathering and production to make a workable quantum computer would take an unbelievable ammount of resources and we would see it coming well in advance?

Replies (1)

Nah, that is not true. Look at the history of classic transistors. Every year a prediction, every next year that prediction blown out of the water. There are many quantum approaches. Topological is an interesting one, but there are others. And generally speaking the number of working logical qubits needed for a quantum computer to break the pre-image resistance of SHA-256 is in the range of thousands. Plus no shortage of motivation, just think of what cracking 256 gets you. If later this year some researchers announce they've created a machine with 100 logical q-bits, that's be a monumental engineering feat but definitely outside the realm of possibility. (It'd be a ChatGPT3 moment.) And if that happens later this year then bitcoin is effectively dead, since there is little chance the protection can evolve faster than the threat. Bitcoin hasn't agreed upon a single, standardised post-quantum cryptographic algorithm yet, to say nothing of implemenation. Too busy arguing about op-return and jpegs. That's how it ends.