The effect of the development of Quantum Computers on Alternate Digital Currency

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Re: The development of quantum computer technology and cryptographic currencies.

There is now active development of quantum computer technology specifically aimed at breaking encryption.

Cryptographic currencies such as Feathercoin and Bitcoin rely on encryption to operate, what are the dangers and what is the time scale of any effects?

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Currently, Quantum computers are being invented.
Quantum computers sound a bit magic, can they do this stuff? Ans. Yes
When Quantum computers become operable Cryptographic currency will have to take action and improve encryption.
Crytographic currency Bitcoin is more secure than first seems, since the Quantum attacker does not necessarily have your public key
Feathercoin is slightly more resilient to Quantum computers because of the addition use of Neoscrypt but that would also be “potentially” breakable.
Feathercoin has already hard forked to a new algorithm so there is experience and it is feasible to change to a quantum encryption algorythm.
Neoscrypt will take slightly longer to break than Scrypt.

Refs :
Bitcoin vs. The NSA’s Quantum Computer
http://www.bitcoinnotbombs.com/bitcoin-vs-the-nsas-quantum-computer/
Bitcoin Is Not Quantum-Safe, And How We Can Fix It When Needed
https://bitcoinmagazine.com/articles/bitcoin-is-not-quantum-safe-and-how-we-can-fix-1375242150
Quantum Computing Draws Closer; Danger for Bitcoin?
http://bitcoinist.net/quantum-computing-draws-closer-danger-bitcoin/
What will quantum computing such as D-Wave do to Bitcoin mining?
https://www.quora.com/What-will-quantum-computing-such-as-D-Wave-do-to-bitcoin-mining

ghostlander

“Neoscrypt will take slightly longer to break than Scrypt.”

It’s rather much longer than slightly longer.

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Q42 : Where : Rather ~( X( - i) * Slightly) , define X(

:)

greenuser

I hope i have understood this correctly and i have already spent time thinking of ways around protecting my crypto currency. We are lucky we have a coin that is not the easiest to crack. Cracking bitcoin will be more profitable.

Ok, so lets say I have 20btc:

I use 40 individual Electrum portable wallets and keep only 500mbtc on each.
I put 4 wallets on 10 usb sticks in a striped parity fashion like in RAID 5.

or…

I use 80 individual Electrum portable wallets and keep only 250mbtc on each.
I put 8 wallets on 10 usb sticks in a striped parity fashion like in RAID 5.

Ok so I carry my 20btc on maybe 10 usb sticks on a key ring.
I have backups of my wallets due to the RAID striping, and a hack can only get a proportion of my coin, rather than all of my coin.
At what point in this approach do I make the efforts economically unviable for attack?

Also, is there a portable feathercoin wallet I can keep on a USB stick?

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Defence against your keys being hacked it mostly dependant on the system not the coin.

USB or paper appear he safest, but not if all USB firmware is owned by the N$A or if your house burns down with the only copy of your paper wallet.

But I am no expert in the exact probabilities.

Also the system you propose appears complicated in general, KISS.

ghostlander

It doesn’t matter in general if you split your coins into many wallets or keep a single one as long as your private keys are in a safe storage. If the elliptic curve cryptography fails, we’ll have a much larger problem than coin theft. The Internet as we see it will be over.