At that point though the whole concept of bitcoins will be moot. If quantum computers can crack lost wallets they can also crack active wallets, and at that point there’s no reason to buy bitcoin at all, which will tank the value of bitcoin making it mostly not worthwhile to crack wallets.
So if we get to that point, there will be one proof-of-concept wallet crack, and instantly after that bitcoin will cease to exist in any relevant fashion.
There’s a window between the proof of concept success and Bitcoin being worthless where the attacker could attack any wallet and collect/sell while people figure out what is happening. The only question at that point is do you attack and sell aggressively to beat the clock, or do you slowly and carefully attack to try and stay under the radar? If one person has the ability to break crypto, then it follows that other people working towards it only have to align the same pieces before the window shuts.
Considering that you’d need a paradigm-breaking revolutionary and incredibly expensive device to do so, I’d find it hard to believe that you could stay under the radar with it.
What I’d expect to happen is that some big corporation and/or university manages to build a quantum computer capable of breaking 256bit encryption, and quite instantly after the announcement bitcoin will tank into nothingness or will change the algorithm to something quantum-computer safe. Well before some shady actor will get their hands on a quantum computer to crack wallets.
At that point though the whole concept of bitcoins will be moot. If quantum computers can crack lost wallets they can also crack active wallets, and at that point there’s no reason to buy bitcoin at all, which will tank the value of bitcoin making it mostly not worthwhile to crack wallets.
So if we get to that point, there will be one proof-of-concept wallet crack, and instantly after that bitcoin will cease to exist in any relevant fashion.
There’s a window between the proof of concept success and Bitcoin being worthless where the attacker could attack any wallet and collect/sell while people figure out what is happening. The only question at that point is do you attack and sell aggressively to beat the clock, or do you slowly and carefully attack to try and stay under the radar? If one person has the ability to break crypto, then it follows that other people working towards it only have to align the same pieces before the window shuts.
Crypto is and always has been a scam.
Considering that you’d need a paradigm-breaking revolutionary and incredibly expensive device to do so, I’d find it hard to believe that you could stay under the radar with it.
What I’d expect to happen is that some big corporation and/or university manages to build a quantum computer capable of breaking 256bit encryption, and quite instantly after the announcement bitcoin will tank into nothingness or will change the algorithm to something quantum-computer safe. Well before some shady actor will get their hands on a quantum computer to crack wallets.