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Reading this entertaining piece of a QC enthusiast mining bitcoins with a Quantum Computer (although efficiently mining bitcoins with the current state of QCs is far-fetched, it is quite possible to be done in the next few years), I wonder how exactly will technologies already using Blockchain adapt to the change?

Are they currently being worked upon? How would post-quantum cryptography integrate with existing tech secured using today's cryptography algorithms?

Sanchayan Dutta
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nj2237
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1 Answers1

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Bitcoin uses elliptic-curve cryptography to sign transactions, which can easily be broken by Shor's algorithm.

I didn't actually read the article because it looked kind of dumb, but I gathered that the author proposed using Grover's algorithm to speed up the mining process by looking for hashes more efficiently. If you had a functioning quantum computer, then I think it would be more efficient to forget about mining and instead just transfer people's bitcoins directly into your own account. A useful quantum computer would completely destroy the entire Bitcoin fundamental model.

I believe that other cryptocurrencies, like Cardano, are already designed to be secure against quantum attacks, to prevent this issue.

tparker
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