[rvz]

Well quantum computing's only economically valuable use-case is cracking RSA and other weak quantum-vulnerable cryptography.

But there is a $100B+ (and growing) bounty to crack satoshi's Bitcoin wallets. The higher the bounty grows, the more urgent it is to break Bitcoin to claim Satoshi's wallet.

(Unless Bitcoin forks into a quantum-resistant hashing method).

[bigyabai]

> there is a $100B+ (and growing) bounty to crack satoshi's Bitcoin wallets

That's like saying there's a $100T+ bounty on robbing the IMF. Bitcoin is backed by nothing, if you pull out a Jenga block that big then the whole thing is tits up worthless.

It will also (incidentally) make you the enemy of some particularly powerful people with connections to criminal networks.

[bawolff]

> (Unless Bitcoin forks into a quantum-resistant hashing method).

Aren't the hash functions bitcoin uses already quantum resitant?

> Well quantum computing's only economically valuable use-case is cracking RSA and other weak quantum-vulnerable cryptography.

The exciting use case is simulating quantum systems for physics & chemistry research. Cracking RSA is mostly a meme use case since the moment it looks like someone is about to get one everyone immediately switches algorithms.

[ameliaquining]

The hash function used for proof-of-work is, but the signature schemes for authenticating transactions aren't. So you can't make a bunch of counterfeit bitcoins out of thin air, but you can steal other people's bitcoins, which isn't really better.

[proto-n]

Not exactly. You can't steal anything unless the person revealed the public key. Addresses are just hashes of public keys, therefore qc resistant. However, you can't ever reuse an address, as signing reveals the public key.

Otoh, afaik either it wasn't like this in the satoshi era or satoshi revealed the public key. In any case, satoshi's wallets are crackable by qc.

[ameliaquining]

I'm curious, does this mean that, if all Bitcoin wallets had been programmed from the beginning to never reuse addresses, Bitcoin could have been implemented without any asymmetric cryptography?

[fnord77]

won't Bitcoin become worthless the millisecond any wallet gets cracked?

[hattmall]

Not necessarily, the majority of Bitcoin trades, which are it's entire source of value, are never even executed in the block chain at all. Neither the block chain nor the exchanges could actually handle the volume of a significant percent of holders withdrawing in a short duration. Now I don't know what that percent is but it's likely significantly less than 20%.

As long as there's unaudited exchanges minting so called stable coins at will. The entire crypto sphere is valuated fully devoid from any actual underlying fundamental. Cracking a wallet could be the catalyst for its undoing but it could also be something else or nothing at all.

[Nevermark]

Uh, no.

The moment there is good reason to believe Bitcoin's on-chain accounts are vulnerable, there will be a run on the whole chain.

Nobody will buy more Bitcoin, and Bitcoin holders will be competing with every other holder to sell what they have.

Bitcoin's value will go to zero, quickly/instantly.