Quantum computing are advancing swiftly in recent times with Google, etc announcing new developments in the field and claiming to deploy some of the largest every computing entities ever known to mankind. This latest advance in the sector is often seen to be the antithesis to Bitcoin’s consensus networks but that idea is contested by computer science experts and even if it were so, such a machine is no close to being developed in the near future.
Recently, an old Bitcoin wallet probably belonging to a dead early adopter was up for grabs for hackers around the world. The wallet had roughly 69370 Bitcoin within it which is close to $700 million according to the market price of the cryptocurrency at press time. The wallet has been inactive for many years and recently, hackers have been passing the wallet around to assist in hacking it but no one so far has been able to do so. This speaks volumes of Bitcoin network’s strong capacity to ward off hacking entities. But, some hackers believe that a sufficiently powerful quantum computer may be able to break it in the near future.
Crypto enthusiast and users Alon Gal put word out to to his 29000 followers to help him unlock the keys to the massive Bitcoin deposit and get a share of the spoils. He is not the only one attempting to unlock the private keys of this wallet as an online hacker community All Private Keys offers members a substantial share of the spoils if they are able to crack this puzzle and unlock the core .dat file with lost passwords. So far, no one has been able to do so.
Alon Gal, apparently running into a dead end tweeted an appeal to Google to let him use their futuristic Quantum computer. However, as pointed out earlier, such a computer is not currently available and its functionality is limited as well. Current crop of these computers haven’t been able to hack into even basic blockchain networks let alone the biggest and most powerful ones like Bitcoin itself.
Latest Chinese advancements in the sector are believed to use Quantum entanglement to bypass the internet directly and exchange encryption keys around 1,120 kilometers, more than the previous record of 1,000 kilometres. Google also made headlines to solve an equation that normally would have taken 10,000 years in under 3 minutes. However, ex-Bitcoin Core developer Peter Todd called the achievement, a “primitive quantum computing concept” that was nowhere close to beating the cryptographic calculations and confirmations.
It remains to be seen how the emerging tech will disrupt blockchain technology’s ability to conduct transactions around the world.
Image source: pixabay.com
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