Some six million bitcoins, or 30% of the issued supply, are exposed to the quantum risk of theft. Analytics provider Glassnode said those bitcoins have exposed public keys, making them vulnerable to the risk that quantum computers may eventually be able to break their encryption and figure out private keys used to move BTC from their identifying public keys. The risk to bitcoin from quantum computing is still theoretical, with some experts saying it is a decade or even decades away, while others fear that it could be closer. The U.S. government has set 2035 as the date by which all government data must be quantum-resistant. There are ways the…
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Bitcoin Quantum Theft Freeze Proposal Draws Alternatives
BitMEX suggest canary in a coal mine approach
A controversial proposal to freeze older, dormant bitcoins to prevent them from being stolen by quantum computing attacks is generating a great deal of pushback, with several prominent sources suggesting alternatives. About 1.7 billion dormant bitcoins are locked using old encryption protocols that make them exceptionally vulnerable to theft by quantum computers, which will be powerful enough to break bitcoin’s encryption by brute force. Beyond that, 34% of the total bitcoin supply has an exposed public key that will be vulnerable to quantum threats unless transferred to new wallet addresses. A proposal yesterday by prominent bitcoin developers, including Jameson Lopp, suggested a three-stage freeze of older bitcoins over five years,…
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Proposal Would Freeze Bitcoins to Protect Against Quantum Theft
Quantum computers could break bitcoin encryption
A new proposal from five prominent Bitcoin developers would freeze coins in order to protect them from attacks by quantum computers, which are expected to be strong enough to break Bitcoin’s encryption and allow the theft of dormant tokens. Some 1.7 billion dormant bitcoins are locked using old encryption protocols that make them exceptionally vulnerable to quantum theft. That includes Satoshi Nakamoto’s 1.1 million bitcoin stash. The “Post Quantum Migration and Legacy Signature Sunset” proposal, or BIP-361, would have three stages. First, bitcoins would be sendable only to post-quantum secure addresses. That would take place about three years after BIP-361 goes live. Two years later, the second phase would freeze…
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Undermining Bitcoin’s ECDSA
Part 2 of a look at the threats quantum computing poses for crypto
In the first installment of this series, we introduced the concept of “quantum computing” and how, while still experimental, its implications for blockchain security include the potential exposure of public keys, the theft of funds—and thus the transformation of cryptocurrencies as we know them. That article focused on the SHA-256 algorithm’s contribution to Bitcoin security primarily via its consensus mechanism, but SHA-256 is only one side of the coin so to speak. In this second part, we will examine the Elliptic Curve Digital Signature Algorithm (ECDSA). A signature algorithm deeply embedded within the Bitcoin protocol, ECDSA adds a layer of authentication by linking a public key with its corresponding private…
