Bitcoin and quantum computing
Quantum Physics
2018-01-10 v2 Cryptography and Security
Abstract
Bitcoin is a digital currency and payment system based on classical cryptographic technologies which works without a central administrator such as in traditional currencies. It has long been questioned what the impact of quantum computing would be on Bitcoin, and cryptocurrencies in general. Here, we analyse three primary directions that quantum computers might have an impact in: mining, security, and forks. We find that in the near-term the impact of quantum computers appear to be rather small for all three directions. The impact of quantum computers would require considerably larger number of qubits and breakthroughs in quantum algorithms to reverse existing hash functions.
Keywords
Cite
@article{arxiv.1711.04235,
title = {Bitcoin and quantum computing},
author = {Louis Tessler and Tim Byrnes},
journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:1711.04235},
year = {2018}
}