You'd better sell your bitcoins

[John Clark]

Quantum computer expert Scott Aaronson has always been a vocal critic of the excessive hype surrounding his subject, but just a few days ago he wrote this: 

"I now think it’s a live possibility that we’ll have a fault-tolerant quantum computer running Shor’s algorithm before the next US presidential election. And I say that not only because of the possibility of the next US presidential election getting cancelled, or preempted by runaway superintelligence!"

When we have a quantum computer big enough to run Shor's algorithm, bitcoin becomes worthless. Aaronson then says this:

"The two biggest known application areas for QC remain (a) quantum simulation and (b) the breaking of public-key cryptography, just as they were thirty years ago."

Quantum Computing, too much to handle

John K Clark

[Giulio Prisco]

Like I still had bitcoin to sell :-( :-( I had thousands! I sold them
at less than $10/btc long ago.

> John K Clark
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[John Clark]

On Mon, Nov 17, 2025 at 10:56 AM Giulio Prisco <giu...@gmail.com> wrote:

> Like I still had bitcoin to sell :-( :-( I had thousands! I sold them at less than $10/btc long ago.

Wow, that sucks!  

John K Clark

 

[John Clark]

It occurs to me that if you had a fault-tolerant quantum computer running Shor’s algorithm then to wreck bitcoin you'd only need to hack the account of Satoshi Nakamoto because it isestimated to contain 1.1 million bitcoins. 

 John K Clark