Will Bitcoin be threatened by the development of quantum computing?

Representative image

Back in 2009, when Bitcoin established a peer-to-peer (P2P) lending system supported by its native Bitcoin (BTC) currency, the world regarded a decentralised financial system with amazement and scepticism.

More than a decade later, BTC has not only become the most valuable cryptocurrency in the world by market cap but has also accelerated the adoption of blockchain technology across several sectors.

Blockchain technology, which uses cryptographic encryption techniques to provide a trustless and decentralised ledger system for recording transactions immutably, has given rise to a number of applications, including DeFi or decentralised finance, which is revolutionising how people conduct business online.

However, the supremacy of blockchain-based protocols like Bitcoin may soon be challenged by a new generation of quantum computers that employ quantum bits, often known as “qubits”, to do computations orders of magnitude quicker than even the most powerful supercomputers.

How quantum computing works and how it may lead to dangerous attacks?

While conventional computers utilise bits, which alternate between 0 and 1, quantum computers employ qubits, which may exist in both states simultaneously.

These computers are millions of times quicker than the fastest supercomputers available today because they can calculate and take into account several configurations at once.

With this level of processing power, bad actors might leverage the benefits of quantum computing to target protocols like Bitcoin in an effort to steal money from the millions of cryptocurrency users who already conduct online transactions.

Such elements may theoretically deploy potent quantum computers to attack susceptible wallet addresses or even target transactions while they are being processed on the blockchain by using various tactics, such as transit attacks or storage assaults.

While transit attacks are beyond the capabilities of the majority of the quantum computers now in use, storage attacks appear to be more likely since they depend on how securely tokens are maintained by different users.

Is Bitcoin's hegemony currently under threat?

Today's borderless transaction systems, such as Bitcoin and other blockchain protocols, are not especially vulnerable to quantum computing assaults.

This is due to the fact that the processing power of quantum computers has not advanced above 100 qubits, greatly restricting the likelihood of an attack on a protocol as vast and safe as Bitcoin.

Nevertheless, given how quickly technology is developing, it is predicted that over the next 10 years, quantum computers with more than a million qubits will likely become a reality.

With so much computing power, a concerted attack on the Bitcoin network in its current state would be seriously undermined, with even transit attacks being a very real possibility for cybercriminals.

However, given the restricted time, depending on the block processing time of each protocol, and the enormous amount of qubits needed to launch a successful attack, transit assaults would still be a very difficult undertaking.

Quantum computing used by projects that aim to resist any potential attacks

There are several initiatives underway seeking to modify or implement new designs that would make protocols like Bitcoin even more secure, despite the fact that quantum computers have not yet developed the degree of computational power required to pose a danger to them.

Furthermore, blockchain technology itself is constantly developing as developers and business owners compete to be the most innovative.

One of the most pressing jobs for the crypto development community will be to abandon elliptic curve cryptography (ECC), which relies on a set of public and private keys to encrypt data.

Numerous teams are looking at alternative cryptographic techniques to safeguard the future iteration of Bitcoin and other protocols because they see the need for stronger and more attack-proof solutions.

Block lattice technique, used by the QAN Platform, directed acyclic graph (DAG) technology, used in the Iota blockchain, and even quantum key distribution (QKD), which was jointly created by Toshiba and JPMorgan, are some significant instances of quantum-resistant technologies.

The key message is still that the crypto developer community is doing everything possible to prepare for the risks posed by quantum computing, despite the fact that each of these methods has adopted a different strategy to make sure that their respective networks can withstand quantum computing attacks.