Bitcoin as we know grew tremendously over a few years starting from a value $0.003 in April, 2010 to a sky-soaring $4,440 today. It now stands as the most popular cryptocurrency. The complicacy of the mining techniques and hence its rarity has turned into a kind of digital gold. People don’t want control of a third party like the government on their hard earned property. This is where cryptocurrencies like bitcoin find their place because of their decentralized nature. People can make their transactions in cryptocurrencies like bitcoin without the government’s intervention and hence cryptocurrencies are untraceable.
There is something that is threatening the existence of these currencies, Quantum Computers. Quantum Computers the to be next generation computers are claimed to be superpowerful. Even million times more powerful than the fastest supercomputer. The Superposition State of a Quantum System and Quantum Entanglement makes these computers the Computing Giant. They are a threat to the RSA algorithm[1] which is prevalent in every cryptosystem nowadays e.g. the banking, defense and almost all government domains. The foundation of RSA algorithm lies in the complicacy of prime factorization of very large numbers which are the private keys of the users. A classical computer takes unimaginably long time to factorize a number. But according to Shor’s Algorithm[2], a quantum computer can factorize a very large number in a minute or two thus destroying the foundation of RSA algorithm and ultimately that of bitcoin. As the techno giants like NASA, Google, IBM and many more are investing regressively to develop the Quantum Computer, it is believed that they may be on a verge of developing one successfully in the near future. The Canadian company
D: Wave Systems already claims to have built one successfully. Below is the video on "Google and NASA's Quantum Artificial Intelligence Lab" showcasing the Quantum Computer built by D: Wave System.
However, scientists questions the legitimacy of the quantumness of this so called quantum computer built by D: Wave System. No matter what it is really a threat to bitcoin because using a quantum computer one will know the private key of the bitcoin holders and can access the bitcoins. Scientists are already in work for addressing this issue. One way is to change the cryptosystem used in bitcoin to a Quantum Proof cryptosystem. However they should be ahead of Quantum Computer off course.
References:
[1] RSA Algorithm
(
)
[2] Shor’s Algorithm (https://arxiv.org/pdf/quant-ph/9508027)