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 [flagged] Can someone explain why Bitcoin isn't crashing due to quantum?
11 points by XiphiasX 85 days ago | hide | past | favorite | 53 comments
Institutions hold Bitcoin. Institutions are smart. Smart entities are able to extrapolate and understand that quantum computers will be able to crack encryption before 2030 due to accelerating advancements both in intelligence and quantum computers. Accelerating advancements, not linear. So smart money knows that there is not an unreasonable chance Bitcoin gets cracked at around 2027-2028. That’s about 2 years left. Yet one Bitcoin costs a two bedroom apartment in St. Petersburg. Something does not compute for me here.

Am I the only one who’s delusional or the world has gone mad?



> Can someone explain why Bitcoin isn't crashing due to quantum?

Because the current state of the art in Quantum can only factor 2 digit numbers (maybe) and are probably decades away or breaking traditional encryption or Bitcoin.

> Smart entities are able to extrapolate and understand that quantum computers will be able to crack encryption before 2030 due to accelerating advancements both in intelligence and quantum computers.

This is false. What “smart money” do you know that has indicated they believe this?

>Accelerating advancements, not linear.

Also false. What gives you the impression that this is true? Quantum computing is definitely not increasing at an exponential rate, and LLMs have already hit the top of the S-curve and new models are not exponentially better than previous models, they’re incrementally better.

> So smart money knows that there is not an unreasonable chance Bitcoin gets cracked at around 2027-2028.

Again false. Why do you believe that “smart money” believes this?

Could it be that you believe it, but smart money does not which is why they are still investing in Bitcoin?


Close to "2 digit numbers in base 2". There are some paper about factoring bigger number like 15, but they assume some structure of the factors.


The way I understand it:

Introducing quantum resistant addresses is possible via a soft-fork, so rather easy.

Work on it already started: https://github.com/jlopp/bips/blob/quantum_migration/bip-pos...

If capable quantum computers become more probable and the soft fork is not already happening, it will be accelerated. And then everybody will move their coins to quantum resistant addresses.

So it does not look like a major problem. It will lower the price a bit though. Because old, lost coins will be revived and come to the market.

There will also be some type of war around "code is law" because some people will suggest to invalidate old coins on non-quantum-resistant addresses. That will be interesting to watch.


Financial markets work on very short scales. And have been doing so increasingly. If you can still make money for 2 years. Well you will. And if you believe you are smart you try to time it. And only dump or short at moment you gain most.

Just like during 2008 lot of people noticed that there were issues in the market and assets. But stayed in as there was still money to be made. Honestly it really looks like same thing is now happening again, be it with AI or other type of lending. Cracks are showing, but there is not that much movement yet.


The world doesn't operate with code as law. If somebody steals all the bitcoins in the world then they'll just fork it [1].

A significant amount of bitcoins are held by known entities (exchanges) so it's pretty trivial for institutions to keep their coins after a fork. Those of you self-hosting might have some losses.

[1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ethereum_Classic


+1, the tokens from before a quantum hack will be transferred to a new fork. So at that moment, the value of BTC will go to 0 and the value of BTC v2 will take the value of BTC.

However at the moment, the community seems to be leaning towards pay-for-quantum-resistance [0]

[0] https://github.com/bitcoin/bips/pull/1670


I'm not so sure this will apply to BTC. It more or less has the staying power that it has because it hasn't changed at all, in fact pretty much everyone involved with it has resisted changing it, and it's not obvious there's anyone with enough political capital to make the fork, because anyone, right now, can make a fork of BTC and none of them have ever done well.


It will change if it has to. When everyone knows they have to do something it tends to actually happen. See COVID lockdowns, for example.


So what will people who self-host can or will do?


Why do you think quantum computers are going to get that good in the next couple of years? I suspect the odds of that happening are approximately zero.


Why, you ask? It is because AI won't get that good in the next couple of years so the hype people are positioning themselves for the next cycle.


Because advanacements accelerate with geometric progression, not linear one.


You asked the question, but don't want to hear the answer.

Advancements are more often logarithmic than geometric: a brief flurry of progress as easy barriers are overcome, followed by a long unsexy slog of incrementalism.

Bitcoin may well be broken someday, but the time scale is on decades, which is well beyond the horizon for high-volatility markets like Bitcoin


Some do for a while like Moore's law. Many don't. Quantum computing seems kind of stuck.


The world will have bigger fish to fry if "encryption" gets cracked around 2027-2028. I doubt it will, but anyway assuming it does then they will switch to quantum resistant encryption algorithms instead.


That doesn’t explain Bitcoin’s price. Even if what you say is true, assuming BTC gets cracked within 2-3 years, smart money would get out of it and would go into real estate, land and physical assets instead. Why isn’t this happening? I mean anyone who is able to graso exponentials and there are a LOT of people who can, will come to same realization.

Also, you can’t really switch Bitcoin to quantum-proof algo. It’s pretty much inpossible.


You could consider the price functions as a prediction market; it's telling you smart money doesn't believe it will be cracked around 2027-2028.


Look, even experts say Bitcoin will be cracked at 2030 worst. That’s only 5 years away. Even if it’s 5 years, not 2, why is it 110k? Gold should be outperforming BTC, but it isn’t. What am I missing???


This reminds me of the bitcoin death predictions website. I don't know if it's still around but if it is then it probably has thousands of predictions by now.


Gove me logical argument why Bitcoin won’t get cracked by quantum computers.


Short it, then.


I can’t because exact moment is not presictible. It can be cracked in2 years or 5, but it WILL. This is not shortable info


No experts think this. You are consuming extremely bad information.


Why???


Answering your question, "experts" you write about are delusional.


Because bitcoin is a bubble. Many do not want to hear it but that is what it it.

Bitcoin has no intrinsic value. It is no different than beanie babies, baseball cards or any collectibles from the past that people thought would make them rich.

The power of bitcoin is in hodling - convincing people to never sell, so the price will keep going up ad infinitum. Once that belief fades away, the entire thing will collapse like a house of cards.

So to answer your question - bitcoin has not crashed yet because it is all about irrationality. Once rationality pops its head up and people start waking up from the dream, it will be over. The quantum computers have nothing to do with it. Not only the hodlers do not even understand bitcoin and crypto, but even if it were out already, people would not believe it until they would read it in the news and bitcoin would be already crashing. And likely even then they would just spam the internet with diamond hands and refuse to believe it is over(again, irrational behavior).

Personally, I absolutely hate that some-people, some-where, some-time ago, hijacked the idea of crypto currency and turned it into an investment instrument, which it is not. Crypto is a beautiful idea that would have worked miraculously if deployed into the real world as intended and we could have had nice things, but we got hoodwinked and it turned all crypto to shit.


Your argument makes no sense. Many things can become bubbles. Land can be bubble, physical gold can be bunble, oil rigs in the sea can be bubble. Yet people choose to focus on Bitcoin which WILL be cracked by quantum, and not physical gold which will NOT be cracked by quantum. According to this knowledge, physical gold, land and emerald mines are severely underpriced and Bitcoin is severely overpriced.

How am I wrong?

Also, Bitcoin is more useful than beanie babies because Bitcoin is censorship resistant, but Beanies can be confiscated. You are fundamentally wrong that Bitcoin holds no intrinic value. Bitcoin’s intrinsic value is method of circumventimg censorship. Tell me how I am wrong and how Bitcoin’s intrinsic value doesn’t stem from censorship resistance due to decentralized nature. You can use GPT5-Pro deep research to aid your answer.


> How am I wrong?

How are you right? do you believe in yourself enough to put your money at it? If not, this conversation makes no sense.


I do, I have begun accumulating physical gold, because it will spike to heaven once quantum cracks all systems.


Bitcoin is not unique in being hard to block, in fact it's not particularly good at it compared to some other cryptocurrencies. So why should Bitcoin have the largest market cap of any chain, and why should it be worth anything near what it is if it's main purpose is as a medium of exchange and not as a buy-and-hold asset?


I'm not going to spoon feed you, but look up the "What Is Money? Saylor Series" podcast episodes and that will answer all of your questions.

Look up Gresham's and Thier's laws for the quick answer


Quantum computing is as real as my $1bn bank account. It does exist, I just can't access it. There is a lot of money to be paid, however, to be doing this "research" and part of the fund raising is hyping. It does help that there is no target or goal to reach: This keeps the prospects of your funding unlimited. Quite fitting for quantum mechanics.


You seem to believe some combination of 'quantum will break all practical crypto by 2030-ish' and 'the big fish in the Bitcoin pond couldn't replace Bitcoin's crypto algorithm'.

Why do you believe those, when the smart money obviously doesn't?


Bitcoin transition to post-quantum cryptography is unrealistic due to this fact:

If the encryption is cracked, then who is to say who owns which Bitcoin? As soon as I try to transfer any coin that I own, I expose my public key, your "Quantum Computer" cracks it, and you offer a competing transaction with a higher fee to send the Bitcoin to your slush fund. No amount of software fixes can update this. In theory once an attack becomes feasible on the horizon they could update to post-quantum encryption and offer the ability to transfer from old-style addresses to new-style addresses, but this would be a herculean effort for everyone involved and would require all holders (not miners) to actively update their wallets. Basically infeasible.

^^^ Smart money is aware of this fact, yet real estate and gold aren’t outperforming Bitcoin. Is this truly alpha???


So...the big fish set up a plan to transition "everyone" to their new Bitcoin 2.0. (Before the supposed "quantum crypto" smashes the punch bowl.) A bunch of the little people are unable or unwilling to transition. On the day the miners stop recognizing the old-crypto wallets & keys, those all become worthless.

Seems to me like a great plan, for the big fish to consolidate their control of Bitcoin. At the expense of little people. Who they don't care about.


> So...the big fish set up a plan to transition "everyone" to their new Bitcoin 2.0. (Before the supposed "quantum crypto" smashes the punch bowl.) A bunch of the little people are unable or unwilling to transition. On the day the miners stop recognizing the old-crypto wallets & keys, those all become worthless.

But that’s not the case. The should be transitioning NOW, but that’s not happening.

Also, even if it was done quickly, it would cause collapse of value.


>The should be transitioning NOW, but that’s not happening.

Can quantum computers factor arbitrary numbers with 4 digits already?


No, but when they can it will be too late, so systems should be transitioning NOW.


Have you ever worked in quantum?

Breaking shors is a looooong way off.

You can code on quantum computers here for free:

https://quantum.cloud.ibm.com/


Current quantum computers are toys for physicists that are of zero practical use.

See the recent research paper about recreating quantum factoring records using a dog, an abacus, and a vintage computer


Did you read what I said? Extrapolate with exponentials. Smart people do this.


I did read what you wrote above and I'm confident that it is entirely incorrect for reasons that have been explained.


Oh shoot, should’ve bought wedding cakes for bulk rate!


Related from 2017 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14361918


The market can stay irrational longer than you can stay solvent.


>×Yet one Bitcoin costs a two bedroom apartment in St. Petersburg.

Rent or buy?


Bitcoin hasn't crashed because it is non-functional as a a currency, why would it crash because it's cryptography might break at some point in the future?

>Institutions hold Bitcoin. Institutions are smart.

Come on! Especially financial institutions have a serious track record of ignoring obvious problems, outright fraud and monumental incompetence.


Why is it non-functional? Over ten years ago I was able to use Bitcoin to buy stuff on one of the Silkroad derivatives. And I assume this is still possible to this day. It's better than nothing.


>Why is it non-functional?

The main reason, ironically, is because it can not be regulated. This puts it in direct conflict with every government, who all desire control over their own currency. This guarantees that Bitcoin will only ever be used for things which can only happen outside a regulated banking system. It is also not particularly good at criminal transactions, since it is more transparent than a bank account. Here in Germany crypto is essentially illegal. Of course you can buy it, but transactions require you to deanonymize.

Another reason is of course that it has become an object of intense speculation, which creates high volatility. This drastically decreases it's usefulness as a currency, since holding Bitcoin is a major risk.


How can you not understand. Bitcoin’s main and only FEATURE is the fact than from all assets in this planet, and possibly from all assets jn this Solar System, it CANNOT be cofniscated and censored. That’s the knly reason it has any value at all, to circumvent controls. All other assets like gold, real estate, emeralds, fiat, stocks… CAN be confiscated. Bitcoin’s only unique selling point is circumvention of controls.


I do understand all of that. But all of that makes sure that Bitcoin will never function as a currency, as outlined in the reasons above.


Yes, and it doesn’t have to function as currency. We have enough of those already!


That's right - it doesn't really matter if people have to convert their savings from bitcoin to government tokens in order to buy things. Bitcoin is still extremely functional at protecting people from the massive debasement that is occurring every second. In 2020 alone, the US financial system alone stole 2 million life-time's worth of work from the people through legal counterfeiting.

Bitcoin will go up for ever when priced in government tokens, or likely anything else for that matter.




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