Why Bitcoin Developers Are Not Incentivized to Talk About the Quantum Threat
Episode publishedPodcast: UnchainedUnchained
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We face of this very, uncertain timeline of when and if quantum computers will emerge to the point where they can break our our crypto is a very, you know, interesting kind of at an intellectual level. Right? How how do you apportion your resources? How do you measure the risk? How do you predict, well, we've got a long migration ahead of us. Where when do we start?
If you have the fast flavor, so for example, you have Google working on on on the on the superconducting stuff. The the estimate for the time it takes to crack a key is is on the order of minutes, like roughly ten minutes. And so what you could imagine is that Satoshi's coins would actually be stolen at the same rate at at which they were mined in the early days.
Hi, everyone. Welcome to Unchained, your no hype resource for all things crypto. I'm your host, Laura Shin. Thanks for joining this livestream. Before we get started, a quick reminder, nothing you hear on Unchained is investment advice. This show is for informational and entertainment purposes only, and my guests and I may hold assets discussed in the show. For more disclosures, visit unchainedcrypto.com. Quick note before we get into today's episode. Bits and Bits now has its dedicated feeds. We're spinning off from the Unchained feed and moving to a new podcast and YouTube channel. So if you
Hi, Laura. Thanks for having us.
It's great to be with you, Laura and Justin.
So, everyone, I know we're a bit late to this topic in the sense that others have been talking about this for a while, but we're also quite early because the threat to crypto that quantum poses is, you know, gonna happen at some indeterminate point in the future. However, this threat is already influencing investment, and it is the kind of threat that will take a lot of coordination and planning to overcome, which is why we are discussing it now. So let's just start by laying the groundwork. Justin, why don't you start by explaining what quantum computing is and what threat it poses to crypto?
Sure. So quantum computing is a form of computing that leverages microscopic physics, if you will, that is hidden to the day to day world that we live in, but is very much present. And using this hidden structure, you can run computation theoretically faster for certain classes of algorithms, including algorithms that break the cryptography that we have right now in terms of elliptic curves. And the the major threat for crypto is that it it breaks the current cryptography that we have. So for Affirm specifically, there's three pieces of cryptography that are vulnerable. The first one for user
And, Chris, how would you describe quantum computing and the threat that it poses to crypto?
Yeah. I think Justin said it perfectly. You know? And this is a technology that is still in somewhat early and even speculative stages, but there's been a lot of progress in building these quantum computers by efforts that have invested billions of dollars toward engineering these devices. And a theoretical level and also at an engineering level, we know and have known for several decades now that quantum computers, if they are built at large enough scale, can and would break all of the cryptography that we've been using heavily on the Internet and in blockchain applications and all around the
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