Chatter on the cryptographic side of cryptocurrency has been growing over the past couple of years about the threat posed by quantum computing, an entirely new type of computer that would be many orders of magnitude more powerful than current ones — so powerful that many modern forms of encryption will be crackable.Including the cryptography that makes it impossible to figure out the private key code needed to transfer — spend — a cryptocurrency token from the public key code that identifies that particular coin or stablecoin. So, it is a real threat? The short answer: Yes The long answer is quantum computing is a threat that many developers — including Ethereum creator Vitalik Buterin — believe is at least a decade off. Still, that’s close enough and real enough that if you’re building a financial payments system for the long haul, it’s something you want to be aware of in the development stage. “Once quantum computing becomes powerful enough, then essentially all the security guarantees will go out of the window,” University of California-Berkeley professor and computer security entrepreneur Dawn Song said in October, CNET reported. “When public key cryptography is broken, users could be losing their funds and the whole system will break.”
Full story : Crypto Insiders Edgy over Quantum Computing’s Looming Threat to Blockchain Security.
