A couple of months ago I did some research into the impact of quantum computing on cryptocurrencies, seems maybe significant, and a decent number of LWers hold cryptocurrency. I’m not sure if this is the kind of content that’s wanted, but I could write up a post on it.
I think I have a draft somewhere, but never finished it. tl;dr; Quantum lets you steal private keys from public keys (so all wallets that have a send transaction). Upgrading can protect wallets where people move their coins, but it’s going to be messy, slow, and won’t work for lost-key wallets, which are a pretty huge fraction of the total BTC reserve. Once we get quantum BTC at least is going to have a very bad time, others will have a moderately bad time depending on how early they upgrade.
A couple of months ago I did some research into the impact of quantum computing on cryptocurrencies, seems maybe significant, and a decent number of LWers hold cryptocurrency. I’m not sure if this is the kind of content that’s wanted, but I could write up a post on it.
Writeup of good research is generally welcome on LessWrong.
Did you?
I think I have a draft somewhere, but never finished it. tl;dr; Quantum lets you steal private keys from public keys (so all wallets that have a send transaction). Upgrading can protect wallets where people move their coins, but it’s going to be messy, slow, and won’t work for lost-key wallets, which are a pretty huge fraction of the total BTC reserve. Once we get quantum BTC at least is going to have a very bad time, others will have a moderately bad time depending on how early they upgrade.