Will Willow, Google's quantum computing chip, put bitcoin at risk?

davids355 said:

I dont think so because Bitcoin automatically increases its difficulty rating every 10 minutes based on the amount of hash power available on the network. So although it might be possible to rewrite and then build a longer chain initially it would be difficult (and extremely expensive) to maintain that false chain after the difficulty gets adjusted.

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indianmojojojo said:

but they are speculating about this being able to break into wallets in the future too. Is that possible?

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davids355 said:

I assume that it would be possible one day yes. But I would also assume that when that becomes feasible, Bitcoin wallet addresses and seed phrases would be strengthened - as you probably know the beauty of open source is that vulnerabilities can be identified by the community in real time and patched accordingly.

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davids355 said:

I assume that it would be possible one day yes. But I would also assume that when that becomes feasible, Bitcoin wallet addresses and seed phrases would be strengthened - as you probably know the beauty of open source is that vulnerabilities can be identified by the community in real time and patched accordingly.

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indianmojojojo said:

yes but what about the dormant wallets from the Satoshi era, those would get cracked into and dumped? (Around 5 million BTC)

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xReminisce said:

but how many would suffer from having their wallets drained before that happens tho
wouldn't want to be one of them

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Venusaur said:

Who will have access to Willow? Bad actors could certainly put BTC at risk, but I don't know who will have access to it

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davids355 said:

I would also assume it’s unlikely that many people will have access to these super computers but still if it’s possible then it does pose a risk. I’d assume (and hope) there is some answer though because Bitcoin is an extremely important technology.

Also to be honest I don’t even know if they’d be able to crack Bitcoin wallets because there are a lot of combinations. I’m sure up to this point it would still have taken the fastest super computer in the world billions of years to crack a wallet address and although that would presumably be reduced with the use of something like willow, I don’t know by how much.

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xReminisce said:

We know for a fact, most leaks and hacks from F500 companies are from dumb employees doing dumb stuff.
That itself could be a huge vulnerability too though right ?

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Though most of Datavant’s employees were able to identify the clear signs of a phishing email, a few weren’t, and as a result, the hackers got their hands on the credentials to one of the company’s email accounts.

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