ACCORDING to recent study, advances over the next decade could pave the way for quantum computers powerful enough to breach Bitcoin encryption.
According to scientists at the University of Sussex in the United Kingdom,quantum systems with 13 million qubits, would be able to crack the cryptographic method (SHA-256) that secures the Bitcoin blockchain in less than 24 hours.
Although present quantum computers are nowhere near this level of performance (the current record is a meager 127 qubits), the researchers believe that major advancements in the next ten years or so could result in quantum machines with enough horsepower.
An attacker might hijack transactions and divert funds into their own wallet if they could crack the encryption safeguarding the Bitcoin network.
In this scenario, the market would undoubtedly collapse as soon as an attack was detected, wiping out hundreds of billions of dollars in value.
For the time being, cryptocurrency enthusiasts may rest assured that cracking the SHA-256 algorithm with current hardware is difficult, but this will not always be the case.
The current most powerful quantum machine, manufactured by IBM, is hailed as the first whose performance cannot be reliably replicated by a regular computer, but it falls well short of the 13 million qubits required to break Bitcoin.
However, practically all of the world’s major technology corporations are conducting considerable research into all elements of quantum computing.
While increasing the number of qubits on a quantum processor is a major focus, researchers are also researching qubit design, the pairing of quantum and classical computing, new refrigeration techniques, and other topics.
Despite the fact that a sufficiently powerful quantum computer is unlikely to be constructed before Bitcoin forks to a new quantum-safe encryption method, the research raises an important point about the longevity of encryption techniques.
According to Mark Webber, the project’s chief researcher, because improvements in quantum computing will surely render contemporary encryption obsolete, it would be a mistake to presume that anything encrypted today will remain secure tomorrow.
“People are already worried because you can save encrypted messages right now and decrypt them in the future,” said Webber.
“There’s a big concern we need to urgently change our encryption techniques, because in the future, they’re not secure.”
