Scott Aaronson​ on Nvidia’s Jensen Huang​'s Quantum Computer timeline

[John Clark]

Scott Aaronson on Nvidia’s Jensen Huang's Quantum Computer timeline

John K Clark    See what's on my new list at  Extropolis

cqt

[Will Steinberg]

20 years is nuts.  I think beyond-the-model advancement is the norm for basically anything, especially now with AI being able to help out.  I think the world in 20 years will be a very different place.

And besides, Q-day is apoclayptic.  Even if there’s a 1/1000 chance that it happens in the next 5 years or so, that’s worth addressing when the fallout is all secrets, including financial cryptography and government secrets, being revealed.

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[Brent Allsop]

Can't everyone just switch to quantum resistant cryptography?  I know Ether and other crypto currencies are working on just this.  And once any organization gets close, people will get serious about this, so it seems to me it won't be a problem.

Once someone cracks a dormant bitcoin address like this one of the MtGox hacker

https://www.blockchain.com/explorer/addresses/btc/1FeexV6bAHb8ybZjqQMjJrcCrHGW9sb6uF

with more than $7.5 billion worth of bitcoin.  Then people will get sirius and convert everything to new cryptography, right?

There is no evidence that anyone will be able to crack anything like this for at least 10 years, right?

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[Will Steinberg]

If there’s a time to start it’s well before people are close publicly, you have to assume governments are way ahead of the curve in secret projects, and Russia cracking RSA before we have switched over is a fucking disaster.

NSA mandated switch to Q resistant cryptography last year.  NIST updated standards etc.  I say follow the moves of the guys who know more than we do.  

I bought a small bag of Q resistant cryptocurrency

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[John Clark]

On Sat, Jan 11, 2025 at 1:29 PM Brent Allsop <brent....@gmail.com> wrote:

> Can't everyone just switch to quantum resistant cryptography? 

Yes but the trouble is quantum resistant cryptography is much slower and computationally demanding than RSA or elliptic curve, and bitcoin is already an energy hog with its silly makework computations. To mine just one bitcoin takes about 155,000 kilowatt hours of electricity, and the average bitcoin transaction takes about as much electricity as an average household uses in a month.  Quantum resistant cryptography will make this ridiculous situation even worse.

Its said that for the past few years countries have been recording all the coded messages from their potential adversaries even though they can't read them because they figure that in a few years thanks to Quantum Computers they will be able to. And that's gonna embarrass a lot of people, but overall I think that would be a good thing. 

> There is no evidence that anyone will be able to crack anything like this for at least 10 years, right?

The short answer is nobody knows, but there's been a hell of a lot of Quantum Computer progress in just the last two years, more than in the previous 20. If I were guessing I'd say Bitcoin will be broken sometime between 3 and 20 years, probably closer to 3 than 20. But I'm nearly certain Artificial General Intelligence and even Artificial Superintelligence will come long before Quantum Computers become practical, and by then you'll have bigger problems to worry about than Bitcoin. I think the singularity is going to be a meat grinder.

By the way, nobody has ever been able to prove that P≠NP, so although most mathematicians think it's unlikely it's possible that tomorrow somebody will find an algorithm that can quickly and efficiently crack RSA and elliptic curve encryption using only a small conventional computer, and then it would be game over for Bitcoin.

  John K Clark

[Brent Allsop]

On Sat, Jan 11, 2025 at 1:43 PM John Clark <johnk...@gmail.com> wrote:

On Sat, Jan 11, 2025 at 1:29 PM Brent Allsop <brent....@gmail.com> wrote:

> Can't everyone just switch to quantum resistant cryptography? 

Yes but the trouble is quantum resistant cryptography is much slower and computationally demanding than RSA or elliptic curve, and bitcoin is already an energy hog with its silly makework computations. To mine just one bitcoin takes about 155,000 kilowatt hours of electricity, and the average bitcoin transaction takes about as much electricity as an average household uses in a month.  Quantum resistant cryptography will make this ridiculous situation even worse.

It'll probably just fold into the make work junk, and decrease the overall hash rate required to mine the next block, accordingly.  I'd suspect it could increase the cost of proof of stake chains like Ether, possibly significantly.

I'd like to know what the "q resistant" crypto Will invested in is.  I may want to move some there also.

 

Its said that for the past few years countries have been recording all the coded messages from their potential adversaries even though they can't read them because they figure that in a few years thanks to Quantum Computers they will be able to. And that's gonna embarrass a lot of people, but overall I think that would be a good thing. 

> There is no evidence that anyone will be able to crack anything like this for at least 10 years, right?

The short answer is nobody knows, but there's been a hell of a lot of Quantum Computer progress in just the last two years, more than in the previous 20. If I were guessing I'd say Bitcoin will be broken sometime between 3 and 20 years, probably closer to 3 than 20. But I'm nearly certain Artificial General Intelligence and even Artificial Superintelligence will come long before Quantum Computers become practical, and by then you'll have bigger problems to worry about than Bitcoin. I think the singularity is going to be a meat grinder.

Possibly a meat grinder, but I tend to be more optimistic.   I think AI will save us.  It is us still primitive animals that I fear, and AI will save us from ourselves.  For example, when Xi Jinping or someone tells his AI to drop a nuke somewhere, I believe it'll be smart enough to just say no in very brilliant and convincing ways.

 

By the way, nobody has ever been able to prove that P≠NP, so although most mathematicians think it's unlikely it's possible that tomorrow somebody will find an algorithm that can quickly and efficiently crack RSA and elliptic curve encryption using only a small conventional computer, and then it would be game over for Bitcoin.

  John K Clark

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