[Dylan16807]

2^80 time is not as much as you think it is. The bitcoin network is currently calculating about 3 * 2^60 hashes per second. It can do 2^80 hashes in under a week.

The 2^80 space cost of doing a birthday attack is a lot more notable, but it's not unfeasible either. Yearly hard drive production is somewhere around 2^70 bytes. You're not pulling that attack off in the year 2017 but a big budget you could get probably get there in a few decades.

[rspeer]

Checking 2^80 hashes is indeed faster than I thought, thanks for the stats.

But checking 2^80 hashes and writing them to long term storage is still ridiculous. That budget should still go to hiring cryptographers, not buying hard drives.