Anytime someone says something that is perceived to be negative these days everyone hates on them no matter how much what they are saying makes sense. @jerrybanfield in my mind is a great contributor to the Steemit community. He takes a very analytical approach to his decisions. I had a pretty in depth conversation with a couple people in 2014 who had been into crypto currencies for a few years before I first found out about them in regards to the threat of Quantum Computers. Jerry brought up this concern in a recent video he posted on YouTube and he got tons of hate and was accused of spreading FUD.
You can seriously just explain an aspect of how Bitcoin works and it will scare a lot of the non-technical n00bs who simply like the idea of digital cash and they keep seeing the price go up and they want a piece of the action. One thing that non-technical n00bs typically don't realize is that Bitcoin is essentially secured by extremely large numbers. It is like knowing all the possible doors but not having enough time to check all of them.
Imagine having a ton of filing cabinet drawers and you have to check each on to see if there is money inside. If there is a room full of them then you can probably get it done. But what if the amount of drawers is the number of stars in the universe times the number of grains of sand on Earth? That is a VERY VERY big number of drawers to check. Quantum computers will eventually be able to break that type of cryptography and check all the combinations.
Others have been thinking a lot about this coming situation as well. @smooth who is a whale here and also a Monero / Aeon developer knows it is coming eventually. Here is a question that @smooth answered regarding the threat of Quantum Computers.
There are givens in this world. Driverless cars are here and will continue to increase every year, more accounts will be on platforms like YouTube and Steemit next year then there are this year, Earth's population will be bigger next year then it is this year, and eventually Quantum computers will be here.
Does The US Government Have Quantum Computers?
Yeah they have them but I think it is doubtful that they have ones that can break our current cryptography or do things beyond the capability of our traditional transistor based machines. The reason I feel this way is because companies like Google and IBM have a lot of money and personally I don't think that the US Government is automatically going to attract the absolute brightest individuals on the planet. Of course there are smart people working there but what I'm saying is that just because a person is the smartest in a particular field doesn't automatically mean they will agree to work for the US Government or a government contractor even if the money offered is more than what IBM or Google can offer. I just way in the past that it was more possible for large governments to have far superior technology then was even known by the public like the Atom bomb or stealth fighter aircraft. Now with the Internet and private companies having extremely talented people working for them the gap is likely pretty close. For instance even with rocket tech we see a company like Space-X having a system to save the first stage of the rocket and have it return to Earth and land on an autonomous barge. That wasn't first implemented by a large government.
Let's just pretend that quantum supremacy is a couple years out. Well it would still take a couple more years for it to get to a point where the quantum computer would be fast enough to break our current cryptographic methods.
So let's say that is 10 years out for industry to achieve that. Well let's pretend the US Government is way ahead of the curve and they are 5 years out from that. Let's be super conservative and say they are 3 years away from it. People already known this is a threat and will be ahead of the curve. Just like adaptations that have previously been made like multi-sig wallets or more advanced blockchains like STEEM that have faster transactions times we will keep evolving and be ahead of the curve.
Conclusion
In my opinion I don't think the government is capable of stripping every Bitcoin wallet at this point or anything like that. The Quantum computer threat isn't sneaking up on us. I was having the conversation in 2014 and even as fast as computing evolves we still aren't close in 2017.
I think that in near future there will be a lot of crypto's coming out that are claiming they are Quantum resistant. I guess IOTA is already claiming that because of it's use / future use of a variation of Lamport signatures.
I think just being aware of this shouldn't worry you but that is a future route these crypto currencies will take. They will implement systems to protect against Quantum attacks. It will be like the last couple of years how the crypto currencies that have anonymous features like Monero, DASH, and ZCash have been popular. There will be future coins that will utilize systems that they will claim will be quantum resistant. Those will likely be popular and a marketing ploy. Even when quantum supremacy is achieved there won't suddenly be a machines that can break everything right away. If those calculations would take a Million Years to complete on the most powerful comuters now then even once a Quantum computer is better it isn't suddenly going to break it in 10 minutes or something. It would still be at hundreds of years and then maybe decades. We will see it coming.
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Thanks for sharing your thoughts. I think the situation with quantum computers and blockchain is the same like with Anti Virus Software and hackers. There will be always a challenge going on who is doing the next step further....I think cryptos will survive the quantum mechanics especially when you think that a quantum computer could also create a quantum resistent code...haha!!!
I agree. It will just be about staying ahead of it just like now we have to secure our coins and not be stupid with our keys....etc.
Thank you for noticing @brianphobos and writing this post which helps us take a more in depth look together!
I hope so!
Thanks for checking out the post! I was really surprised how much people didn't like that video you made and I'm surprised on some of the other videos as well about Steemit. I feel like you do a great job explaining the benefits of the platform and why it makes so much sense so I don't know why people act upset about it. I usually don't get concerned with trolls but it does concern me to a certain respect because there seems to be a bad taste in a lot of people's mouths about the platform and a lot of them aren't coming back around to take another look at the improvements and the other sites and apps building on top of the STEEM blockchain.
I like how you just speak your mind about this stuff and just keep going. I also liked the video you made about how much traffic you are getting months after you posted the videos. You are able to play the long term game now which is great. It is going to pay off big for you for sure!
@brianphobos I'm curious how the newer privacy currencies are dealing with the real threat of QC. I seem to recall hearing a couple of newer tokes are being programmed to become QC resistant, but I can't remember which ones I had read about that were taking those precautions.
It's a more real ad present threat when you consider projects such as the Large Bitcoin Collider have already come online, have generated 3,000 trillion private keys and brute forced into at least three wallets with Bitcoin. This is not even a QC project, rather pooled computing resources in the largest brute force attack known. Imagine if at some point the cost/benefit of pooling resources becomes worthwhile to sponsor a similar style of brute force attack through Golem against Ethereum. I am not a programmer, but on the surface it would seem plausible in light of the Large Bitcoin Collider project.
The one that seems to be pitching it is IOTA which uses Lamport signatures which seem to have been around for a long time. I'm not a cryptography expert and honestly I was surprised in what @smooth said because I always thought Monero was more secure because the keys are larger than with Bitcoin but I guess I was wrong from that aspect.
Wow, I didn't even know about the Large Bitcoin Collider. That is nuts. Yeah it does seem like it could become worthwhile to sit there with it and try to brute force into the top wallets on the Bitcoin Rich List who aren't using multi-sig.
It is concerning stuff and there have been different points where Android wallet addresses and Blockchain.info addresses were hacked because they weren't "random"
I think there will continue to be exploits all the time like that. That is why I think it is crazy when I see these huge Bitcoin Whale account address values. I feel like it is smart to have the money in several different types of wallets and also have value in several different kinds of crypto that doesn't share the same code base and uses different cryptographic principles.
trillion keys, that's mad impressive entropy.@brianphobos as I understand it (I am not a cryptogrpahy expert nor a programmer), the issue of cryptographic security revolves around the concept of entropy - how likely a successful collision would happen between randomly generated private keys and public keys would result in a successful matching pair. When you consider the Large Bitcoin Collider has only managed to brute force 3 wallets out of 3,000
IOTA, as I understand it, is a bit of a hot mess. They opted to home grow their own cryptographic hash (named Curl) for their tangle protocol, and cryptography experts are discovering insufficient entropy in the algorithm. Of course, the IOTA team claims it's BS and nothing but a hit job, but I am waiting a bit to see how this shakes out before speculating.
That is interesting. Sounds like you have done a lot more research on the topic. I personally don't know much about IOTA.
@brianphobos IOTA is a radical rethinking of blockchain tech with the concept of a tangle instead of a blockchain. In a sense it's like the first non-relational database of blockchain tech (compare something like Postgre SQL relational databases to NoSQL non-relational databases). It's fast, efficient and transaction fee free (unlike Bitcoin, Ethereum with gas fees, NEO, etc.). The target market is the Internet of Things marketplace.
I have opted to withhold speculating in it until I feel IOTA has adequately addressed the cryptographic hash issue, but I absolutely think it has every potential to become blockchain v 3.0
It certainly sounds interesting. I just wonder how many of these projects will actually produce anything of value. It will probably be less than 5% of them. With something like that I might throw a couple hundred dollars at it and keep following the project and if things are looking good maybe take a bigger position.
There are so many projects to research and invest in it is crazy.
EOS is my main project that I'm buying all the time. A lot will ultimately be ridding on it for me.
If quantum computing can be used to crack codes/passwords, wouldn't the same/similar technology be able to create coding and signature protocols that are on the same level, essentially rendering the existence moot in that regard?
When tech advances, it generally advances across sectors and has a relatively broad range of applications. If QC becomes a thing, I'm sure there will be protocols developed to protect against QC attacks. These advancements usually happen at or around the same time.
Yeah I agree and and I feel we will see it coming. I think the worry that everyone thinks about in their head is that the government will suddenly have the capability and none of us will know and then they will just smash crypto like a roach. So I guess as far as that goes I don't agree with Jerry because he seems to feel that the government already has this capability and they will crush it when they desire.
I think that going forward I'm going to be on the lookout for crypto currencies that are set up from the beginning to protect against quantum attacks even though it is going to be years away.
your post is very interesting, I like your post, because it can add insight for me, hopefully the future can provide better posts again, so that I can know many things in my life, thank you
Thank you for taking a look at it!
You should be so stupid if you think jerry is right lol
I don't agree with Jerry that the US Government has a quantum computer that do all the calculations to derive the private keys.....etc.
Eventually quantum computers will be here that can but things will evolve before that to protect against it.