Bitcoin Exchange River CEO: Microsoft's quantum computing chips may accelerate the threat of Bitcoin

Alexander Leishman, CEO of Bitcoin Exchange River, recently worried that Microsoft's new quantum computing chips may accelerate the arrival of Bitcoin's quantum threat. Even though the risks of quantum computing to cryptocurrencies still take years to really come to the fore, he stressed that the response should be discussed now.

Microsoft quantum computing chips may accelerate the threat of Bitcoin

According to Leishman, the launch of Microsoft's latest quantum computing (QC) chip Majorana1 may shorten the time for Bitcoin to find solutions to resist quantum threats.

In December last year, Google released its first quantum computing chip Willow; then a few days ago, Microsoft's Majorana1 also joined the ranks of quantum computing.

Leishman tweeted that although breakthrough quantum computing technology that threatens cryptocurrencies will still take years to be implemented, the advent of Majorana1 may shorten this time: Currently, Majorana1 still has a long way to go before such progress, but it may reach 1 million qubits between 2027 and 2029. If run for several days to weeks, such quantum computers may be able to crack Bitcoin addresses through remote attacks.

Added, "Even if the threat may not really come in ten years, it is still crucial to smooth out the risks early."

Is the threat of quantum computing exaggerated?

This is not the first time that quantum computing may threaten cryptocurrency security, but the community is skeptical about this and believes that the problem does not seem to be as serious as expected.

Traditional financial institutions are the first to bear the brunt?

Some believe that quantum computers with cryptography-breaking capabilities may prioritize attacking banks or traditional financial institutions over Bitcoin markets. After all, compared to Bitcoin’s market value of only about $3.2 trillion, the traditional financial market that manages hundreds of trillions of dollars of assets seems to be more attractive.

However, Leishman's statement that "if Bitcoin is affected, the entire banking system will also collapse" is not completely correct: the banking system has multiple layers of security protection. Even if quantum computing can crack the network encryption protocol (HTTPS), it is still quite difficult to perform traffic interception (DoS) or DNS hijacking attacks (DNScachepollution), not to mention that it will completely collapse the financial system.

He also emphasized that "in addition to public key cryptography, traditional financial institutions also use multi-layer security mechanisms such as IP whitelists and symmetric cryptographic verification that are not affected by quantum operations, which make it more difficult for hackers to invade the system."

He also emphasized that even if the attacker successfully penetrates the banking system, the transfer of funds is still strictly monitored, and hackers will find it difficult to obtain the stolen funds: Therefore, quantum computers will not allow hackers to easily obtain all Goldman Sachs' funds, but it may indeed expose billions of dollars of Bitcoin assets to risks.

Will the challenge of quantum computing come first?

Some communities also said they were exhausted by the encryption panic caused by quantum computing, believing that the technology is far from mature and there is no need to worry too much: no one has discussed the major challenges that quantum computing is facing, such as thermodynamic limitations, memory requirements and computational sustainability. In addition, quantum computing is more suitable for the field of probability modeling than to solve discrete mathematical problems in the field of encryption.

Bitcoin response plan: BIP-360

At the same time, the Bitcoin community has begun to research potential solutions. Preston Pys, co-founder of The Investor's Podcast Network, pointed out that BIP-360 is the main response plan at present and it is possible to implement it through soft fork: the proposal converts Bitcoin into a quantum-resistant structure through soft fork to replace existing vulnerable signature methods.

It also added that "Although the threat of quantum computing to Bitcoin is not a short-term problem, it still needs to be carefully discussed and dealt with early to ensure the long-term security of the Bitcoin network."

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