The crypto thread

[Samson]

Oh, that could be totally correct for all I know. Like a "registration fee" or something, that must be paid in Crypto, in order for someone to buy it? You're most likely right there. I was just speaking to the actual creation of the NFT - the creation itself, as far I know, doesn't consume Crypto.

To put anything on the blockchain you need to pay the miners to do so, and that cost can be expressed in dollars/bytes on the blockchain. To send money from my wallet to yours I need a few bytes, so costs a little bit. To mint an NFT you need to put a lot more on the blockchain, like the hash of the file and the metadata about it. This costs quite a bit (about $50-$100 on the ethereum blockchain IIRC), and was the crypto I was referring to. This is also the reason they are so environmentally bad on proof of work blockchains.

 

[Anysense]

It will always have value as a speculative asset. Old stamps or coins have no intrinsic value...

They have value for some people and that is what makes everything you listed very different from crypto. Obviously, you can speculate on them, just as you can do it with any commodity, when supply is very limited. On the other hand, cryptocurrency - like any currency - has value only when you can buy something with it.

 

[warpus]

Oh, that could be totally correct for all I know. Like a "registration fee" or something, that must be paid in Crypto, in order for someone to buy it? You're most likely right there. I was just speaking to the actual creation of the NFT - the creation itself, as far I know, doesn't consume Crypto.

The way it usually works is, in order to put something on the blockchain you need to pay a gas fee, which basically incentivizes somebody to verify the transaction for you which confirms it as legit (for the rest of the ecosystem to accept as part of the blockchain). I'm going to google it now though just to see what's up

It seems that yeah, there exist NFT ecosystems where you can mint for free. It seems to be related to something known as "lazy minting". I looked it up and it seems that when you do that your NFT lives off-chain, but I have no idea what the implications of that are. It seems to me that it does not end up on the blockchain, the way it traditionally happens.

Minting costs don't always have to be high either, it depends on the blockchain. On Ethereum they can be insane, but on something like WAX it's really cheap (because it's designed to be cheap & energy efficient)

In fact, you don't need to pay to mint on WAX either, although you do pay for some transactions.. There's a bunch of steps you go through when you mint an NFT, and some of that costs gas, although the actual minting of the NFT part is free. On top of that you have to deposit some WAX tokens to your account for "RAM", "CPU", etc. and that sort of acts as a way to pay for the platform. It's minimal amounts though, basically not an amount you'd ever have to worry about.

edit: some x-post, but extra details

On the other hand, cryptocurrency - like any currency - has value only when you can buy something with it.

Isn't the value of a commodity determined by seller vs buyer dynamics and how much people are willing to pay for it?

I'm not an economist, but I thought it was "something like that"

 

[RobAnybody]

They have value for some people and that is what makes everything you listed very different from crypto. Obviously, you can speculate on them, just as you can do it with any commodity, when supply is very limited. On the other hand, cryptocurrency - like any currency - has value only when you can buy something with it.

I mean, yes, literally speaking, you can pay for something with a 1894 Barber Dime, or put a 3c George Washington Stamp on your envelope to mail Aunt Sally her Christmas card, & they will be worth $0.10 & $0.03 respectively. But realistically they are collectibles. No one *spends* them as currency. So, not different.

[EDIT: fwiw, I Googled those, I don't have that knowledge at my fingertips, except insofar as my keyboard is at my fingertips ]

 

[Samson]

Quantum computers will not mean the end of cryptocurrencies, there are already algorithms in place to prepare for such things.

I am sure that quantum computers will not mean the end of cryptocurrencies, in that it is quite possible to design a quantum resistant protocol. The question is will it mean the end of all existing cryptocurrencies, and their value dropping to zero? The best paper I have read on this is here, it is a bit beyond me but the way I read it is that a future quantum resistant cryptocurrency could be developed, and a mechanism designed to allow people to transfer bitcoin onto this protocol (which only works if the quantum computer can do Shor's algorithm but not Grover's). But why would anyone give value to this new cryptocurrency, rather than one designed from the ground up to be quantum resistant? If there are 10 (or 1000) different implementations which is going to be valuable? In an decentralised trust free world it seems to me that these are all hard problems .

 

[warpus]

I am sure that quantum computers will not mean the end of cryptocurrencies, in that it is quite possible to design a quantum resistant protocol.

From what I understand some blockchains already have such tech in place. I found this one via a quick googling.

From what I also thought I understand, the SHA-256 encryption scheme is supposed to be quantum computer proof as well, and this is the encryption scheme that Bitcoin and other blockchains are already using.

Here's a Forbes article that talks about some of this.

The question is will it mean the end of all existing cryptocurrencies, and their value dropping to zero? The best paper I have read on this is here, it is a bit beyond me but the way I read it is that a future quantum resistant cryptocurrency could be developed, and a mechanism designed to allow people to transfer bitcoin onto this protocol (which only works if the quantum computer can do Shor's algorithm but not Grover's). But why would anyone give value to this new cryptocurrency, rather than one designed from the ground up to be quantum resistant? If there are 10 (or 1000) different implementations which is going to be valuable? In an decentralised trust free world it seems to me that these are all hard problems .

I haven't had time to read through your link and grok it, but based on what I've read elsewhere, yeah, if there is a blockchain that uses an encryption scheme that becomes for whatever reason possible to break (using a quantum computer or not), then the valuation of any assets on that blockchain should in theory at least plummet, as investors pull out and hackers wreak havoc, leading to selling pressure so high that the value of the tokens crashes.

It seems to me that if there's news that a quantum computer is able to crack let's say the encryption scheme used by Litecoin (just to pick a cryptocurrency at random), and there's enough evidence to make those who invested worry about it, then they will in some capacity trade their Litecoin assets and grab something else, like Bitcoin, or whatever. So moving assets over to a more quantum computer resistant blockchain shouldn't be a problem.

You ask, "Why would anyone value this new blockchain, if it's new and untested?" (basically).. Well.. I think the thing is that this blockchain would have to be proven to some degree as being QC resistant, it would have to be audited by respected auditors, and would probably have a respected dev team behind it, and a bunch of people using it already.

So yeah, I don't think the scenario would be: 1. QC is released that breaks SHA-256 (or whatever) 2. New blockchain pops up that is QC resistant 3. People migrate as fast as they can. Instead, the tech is at least for now ahead of QC development, so assets would be move to an already existing blockchain that has probably existed for a while, and has been upgrading its protocols over the years to keep up with existing and hypothetical tech. That's what Bitcoin seems to have done in 2009 when they upgraded to SHA-256. In theory they could upgrade to something even stronger if the community thought it was necessary.

It's a bit fascinating to me how these 2 technologies and areas of study (quantum computers VS encryption) are sort of in a virtual arms race against each other.

It does seem to me that the more we improve QC tech and work on it, the more value crypto investors will find in blockchains that have been in some way insulated against QC-based problems.. Whether that means encryption algorithms that are in some way proven to be impossible to break using a quantum computer, or some other approach, it seems that there is value in that, and investors should see that. For now it isn't a huge problem, so most people don't seem to look at QC possibilities when investing, but in the future it might very well be more important..

 

[Birdjaguar]

Melania Trump auctioned off her hat, and became the latest victim of the cryptocurrency crash
The former first lady’s chapeau appears to have fetched $90,000 below her asking price.

Melania Trump began 2022 by announcing she’d be auctioning off a hat, along with two other items, for the low, low starting bid of $250,000.

Her website, MelaniaTrump.com, allowed the bids only to be made in cryptocurrency. Remember this. This will be important.

She called the auction the “Head of State” collection. It included the custom-made, wide-brimmed white hat she’d worn to meet French President Emmanuel Macron and his wife, Brigitte, during the Trumps’ first state visit at the White House in April 2018 — autographed — plus a watercolor of Trump in the hat, and a non-fungible token, or NFT, depicting the image.

One year after leaving the White House, Melania Trump is remaking herself as an entrepreneur. In a vast departure from previous first ladies — but in keeping with her business trajectory before her husband became president, when she licensed her name to jewelry and skin care lines — she is reviving her personal brand for monetary gain.

That plan, though, has an unexpected gum in the works: the massive cryptocurrency crash.

“A portion of the proceeds derived from this auction will provide foster care children with access to computer science and technology education,” read a small disclosure on the auction’s website. The rest, presumably, will go to Trump herself. Trump’s office did not respond to questions about how much of the proceeds will be donated, and to which charity.

When The Washington Post checked the hat auction exactly two days before its indeterminate ending time (advertised as Tuesday at 11:59 p.m. PST, although a countdown clock on the website ran 24 hours faster than that), the starting bid had dropped to $155,916, and continued to fluctuate around that level. At an earlier point in the 14-day auction, the bids had reached more than $275,000.

But the auction was only accepting bids in cryptocurrency, which has taken a nosedive in the last week, with

bitcoin falling 20 percent and Ethereum 30 percent.

Melania Trump’s hat auction may have become unlikely collateral damage in the crisis, a prime example of what happens when risk-taking intersects with terrible timing. The only cryptocurrency accepted on Trump’s website is Solana (SOL), which has been one of the hardest-hit, falling more than 40 percent over the previous week. The Solana blockchain (a distributed database that stores a secure and decentralized record of digital transactions) also had an outage on Friday and Saturday, further adding to its free fall. Had this auction taken place in December 2021, Trump would have been accepting bids in Solana during a surge in which its value had increased 11,150 percent since the beginning of the year.

Instead, Trump’s auction closed early Tuesday morning (again, a day earlier than advertised on the website), with the hat and its lot appearing to go for around $90,000 below the asking price. Bidding was at $160,218 and still open well past midnight on Jan. 25, but when The Post checked in on the auction at 3:30 a.m. PST — 19.5 hours before the advertised end time — the site read, “Auction Ended.” No final price is listed.

This is all happening at a time when the Trump family’s business practices are under intense scrutiny, including by New York Attorney General Letitia James (D) who has filed evidence in a civil investigation against former president Trump and his three eldest children focusing on the ways he allegedly misrepresented his assets to secure favorable loans and insurance policies. The former first lady’s post-White House endeavors have puzzled experts on modern first ladies.

“Most previous first ladies certainly have used their celebrity to do good works,” says Myra Gutin, author of “The President’s Partner: The First Lady in the Twentieth Century,” citing Laura Bush’s post-White House advocating for Afghan women; Michelle Obama’s work supporting girls and education and fighting for voting rights; Rosalynn Carter’s continued hands-on volunteering for Habitat for Humanity; and Betty Ford’s rehab center and work to de-stigmatize addiction. “I would classify it [the auction] as a personal pursuit, versus one that’s likely to benefit the country,” says Gutin.

Selling significant items of clothing worn as first lady is also bucking tradition. Although they’re under no obligation to do so, typically, first ladies donate iconic items either the Smithsonian’s First Ladies collection, or to their husband’s libraries and museums, as a way of preserving history for the public. The hat was custom-made for the occasion by Hervé Pierre, the French-born, New York-based designer who became her White House stylist after making her inaugural gown. (That one is in the Smithsonian.) “Mrs. Trump recognized this important moment for the country, and accordingly, a great deal of consideration went into the planning,” her website reads, explaining why she chose to auction off the hat.

“I’m not surprised when I see controversies surrounding her public activity,” says Lauren A. Wright, a political scientist who studies first ladies at Princeton University. “I never know, as I never knew when she was in office, whether she has advisers telling her, ‘You know, we might want to clarify how much of this is going to charity and how much is not.’ Or if she’s doing things and she just doesn’t think a lot about potential public backlash.”

Certainly, other first ladies and presidents have engaged in for-profit activities, particularly the large advances many of them receive to write their memoirs and for speaking engagements. “But that doesn’t take up nearly as much time as their not-for-profit activities,” Wright says. “That’s most of what they spend time on when they leave office.”

Melania Trump, of course, was always an unconventional first lady. She rarely spoke with the press and was “relatively inactive” in public, says Gutin. She also refused to campaign for Republican candidates — and often for her husband — even though polls showed her to be the most popular member of the Trump family. (Although she ended the administration as the least popular first lady ever, with a CNN/SSRS poll showing her to have a 42 percent favorable to a 47 percent unfavorable rating.)

She now mainly spends time with her sister, parents, and 15-year-old son, Barron, at Mar-a-Lago, according to People and CNN, and has a routine of lunch, dinner with her husband, facials, manicures and massages, often spending several hours a day at the spa or going twice in a single day. “She seems to be reverting back to more of the life that she enjoyed when she was not first lady, when she was living in New York,” says Gutin. In New York, Gutin adds, she was “a consumer, and she’s always been someone who was very au courant with fashion and cultural trends.”

For most of the year, Trump appeared to be content to stay out of the public eye. Her Instagram begins with her farewell speech from the White House and features compilation videos of her meeting children; thanks for birthday wishes; and holiday greetings. But when a historian, Michael Beschloss, tweeted out a barren photograph of the Rose Garden last August and called Trump’s controversial renovation an “evisceration,” on its one-year anniversary, she came out swinging.

The newly renovated Rose Garden at the White House in August 2020. (Oliver Contreras/For The Washington Post)

“@BeschlossDC has proven his ignorance by showing a picture of the Rose Garden in its infancy,” Trump tweeted. The most common critiques of the renovation had been that Trump took out the garden’s famous crabapple trees — many of which horticulture experts say were diseased or preventing sunlight from reaching the roses. The barren look of many early photos of the renovations are, experts say, because the flower bushes, were newly planted and not even close to full bloom. “The Rose Garden is graced with a healthy & colorful blossoming of roses,” her Tweet continued. “His misleading information is dishonorable & he should never be trusted as a professional historian.”

In many ways, it seems that Trump was always planning to return to branding opportunities. In February 2017, while she still living in New York City before moving to the White House, Trump filed lawsuits in the United States and Britain against the Daily Mail for insinuating that she’d worked as an escort. The cases were settled for a total of $2.9 million, according to the Associated Press.

Notably, the filing claimed that the tabloid’s insinuations had cost Trump “the unique, once-in-a-lifetime opportunity … to launch a broad-based commercial brand in multiple product categories, each of which could have garnered multi-million dollar business relationships for a multiyear term during which Plaintiff is one of the most photographed women in the world.” The lawsuit stated that Trump had the potential to launch product lines in, “among other things, apparel, accessories, shoes, jewelry, cosmetics, hair care, skin care and fragrance,” to capitalize on being first lady — but had been thwarted by the damage caused to her reputation.

The ethics around profiting off the first lady’s office once you no longer occupy it are murky.

The hat auction marks only the second initiative Trump has undertaken in the past year. The first was the mid-December sale of an NFT featuring a watercolor painting of her eyes, called “Melania’s Vision,” by French artist Marc-Antoine Coulon, who also pained the hat NFT. Unlimited quantities of that NFT sold for one SOL, which was worth around $185 at the time. Each came with an audio message from Trump: “My vision is: Look forward with inspiration, strength and courage.”

Melania Trump is certainly not the only celebrity currently enamored with NFTs and cryptocurrency. Shawn Mendes, Eminem, and Grimes made millions selling NFTs of their images (only for the value to drop precipitously months later). Matt Damon has been featured in a crypto commercial and Reese Witherspoon recently tweeted about crypto being the future, both to widespread ridicule.

It is the uniqueness of NFTs, being digitally marked, authenticated and non-replicable, that seems to appeal to Trump, who used the phrase “one-of-a-kind” many times in advertising the hat, watercolor and NFT.

Melania and Donald Trump at Game 4 of the 2021 World Series in Atlanta. (Elsa/Getty Images)
To look at Melania Trump’s Twitter feed, you’d think she’s an NFT spokeswoman. She has tweeted about her NFT sales 24 times since she launched “Melania’s Vision” on December 16, stopping only occasionally to send out Christmas wishes or praise the Coast Guard. A news release at the time stated, “Mrs. Trump will release NFTs in regular intervals.”

One page of her website is a 22-part FAQ answering such questions as “What is an NFT?"; “How do I create a crypto wallet?", and “Why buy an NFT?” Answer: Because it’s “a unique and secure digital asset” and, like the other collectibles, such as coins or baseball cards, it has the potential to increase in value and can be sold or traded, according to the website.

In contrast, the page dedicated to her former White House initiative, Be Best, has two paragraphs and a video. Trump has said she wants to continue Be Best, which concentrated on children’s issues such as cyberbullying, drug abuse and mental health. On Monday, Trump announced that she was being honored at a gala for her Be Best initiative Fostering the Future, which “provides foster care children with access to education in computer science,” Trump said in a Tweet.

Her website included no details about the Fostering the Future initiative, and it appears to be the first time she’s mentioned it.

 

[Samson]

From what I understand some blockchains already have such tech in place. I found this one via a quick googling.

From what I also thought I understand, the SHA-256 encryption scheme is supposed to be quantum computer proof as well, and this is the encryption scheme that Bitcoin and other blockchains are already using.

I think bitcoin uses Elliptic Curve Digital Signature Algorithm (ECDSA), and I think that is different to SHA-256.

You ask, "Why would anyone value this new blockchain, if it's new and untested?" (basically).. Well.. I think the thing is that this blockchain would have to be proven to some degree as being QC resistant, it would have to be audited by respected auditors, and would probably have a respected dev team behind it, and a bunch of people using it already.

It is not so much why use a new and untested one, but why use one that is already mostly owned because bitcoins and transferred onto it. I like the look of you QRL blockchain from one minutes looking. If that is good tech would it be improved by effectively giving bitcoin holders a load of free QRL coins? If not, why would another be successful doing so?

Most previous first ladies certainly have used their celebrity to do good works

Yeah, but exactly no one expected Melina too.

 

[warpus]

I think bitcoin uses Elliptic Curve Digital Signature Algorithm (ECDSA), and I think that is different to SHA-256.

Various sources I look up seem to say Bitcoin uses a "double SHA-256" encryption algorithm.

It is not so much why use a new and untested one, but why use one that is already mostly owned because bitcoins and transferred onto it.

I think I'm confused a bit by the question, maybe I've been misunderstanding what you mean.

If there were rumours (and some proof) that let's say Bitcoin is using a non-secure encryption algorithm that can be cracked, then some investors would probably start selling their bitcoin assets and trade them for something on another blockchain, let's say maybe ETHereum, essentially removing their assets from the insecure blockchain and onto a secure one, in the form of another token. That's what I assume would happen though, I could be wrong. But let's say you found out that somebody figured out how to use alchemy to turn iron to something indistinguishable to gold, it seems that you'd be tempted to sell/trade your gold for something else, maybe silver, right? Or some other kind of asset.

It's also possible for bitcoin to exist as a "wrapped" version on another blockchain, which is what might happen in that scenario as well.. although I bet people would be more tempted to trade it for something else, since the bitcoin blockchain going down in flames would significantly impact the price of bitcoin, so they probably wouldn't want to hold on to a rapidly depreciating asset.

I like the look of you QRL blockchain from one minutes looking. If that is good tech would it be improved by effectively giving bitcoin holders a load of free QRL coins? If not, why would another be successful doing so?

I'm not sure why they'd want to give anything out for free, but I might be misunderstanding what you mean again. If the QRL blockchain is solid and gains investor confidence, then investors will buy up QRL tokens (or whatever the governance token is on that blockchain), essentially trading other tokens for the new token on an exchange. So in the scenario where the Bitcoin blockchain is compromised, it seems that bitcoin holders will be tempted to dump their bitcoin reserves and pick up other assets elsewhere.

 

[Samson]

Various sources I look up seem to say Bitcoin uses a "double SHA-256" encryption algorithm.



I think I'm confused a bit by the question, maybe I've been misunderstanding what you mean.

If there were rumours (and some proof) that let's say Bitcoin is using a non-secure encryption algorithm that can be cracked, then some investors would probably start selling their bitcoin assets and trade them for something on another blockchain, let's say maybe ETHereum, essentially removing their assets from the insecure blockchain and onto a secure one, in the form of another token. That's what I assume would happen though, I could be wrong. But let's say you found out that somebody figured out how to use alchemy to turn iron to something indistinguishable to gold, it seems that you'd be tempted to sell/trade your gold for something else, maybe silver, right? Or some other kind of asset.

It's also possible for bitcoin to exist as a "wrapped" version on another blockchain, which is what might happen in that scenario as well.. although I bet people would be more tempted to trade it for something else, since the bitcoin blockchain going down in flames would significantly impact the price of bitcoin, so they probably wouldn't want to hold on to a rapidly depreciating asset.



I'm not sure why they'd want to give anything out for free, but I might be misunderstanding what you mean again. If the QRL blockchain is solid and gains investor confidence, then investors will buy up QRL tokens (or whatever the governance token is on that blockchain), essentially trading other tokens for the new token on an exchange. So in the scenario where the Bitcoin blockchain is compromised, it seems that bitcoin holders will be tempted to dump their bitcoin reserves and pick up other assets elsewhere.

My very course and very possibly wrong understanding of the bitcoin solution to QCs is to create a QC secure blockchain, and allow people to create transactions on that where they sign a QC secure wallet address with their bitcoin private key. Then miners allow that transactions from that secure wallet to reference USTO from the bitcoin blockchain on the new secure blockchain. That is what I was referring to by "giving coins for free", and it seems in no ones interest other than the current bitcoin holders.

I agree that the likely outcome is trust in bitcoin going down, and people getting out. The thing is the bigger your holding the more money you can spend on getting the timing right, and once the whales start selling the price could drop very quickly. If you cannot afford to spend millions analysing the market you are very likely to end up holding something worthless. I wonder how much market volume is whales shuffling about their holding to give the appearance of an active market?

 

[uppi]

Various sources I look up seem to say Bitcoin uses a "double SHA-256" encryption algorithm.

SHA-256 is a hashing algorithm, which is used in POW. That does not matter, because if QCs could mine that faster, you could just increase the difficulty. The problem are the private keys, which need to use a public/private key algorithm. In all of those you can in theory calculate the private key from the public key. It is just no practical with conventional computers. But with a quantum computer, all private keys can be calculated, so anybody could do anything on the blockchain.

And no, POS is not in any way secure against that either. It has exactly the same problem.

My very course and very possibly wrong understanding of the bitcoin solution to QCs is to create a QC secure blockchain, and allow people to create transactions on that where they sign a QC secure wallet address with their bitcoin private key. Then miners allow that transactions from that secure wallet to reference USTO from the bitcoin blockchain on the new secure blockchain. That is what I was referring to by "giving coins for free", and it seems in no ones interest other than the current bitcoin holders.

You would need to do that before anybody has a quantum computer, but yes. It is in no ones interest but the bitcoin holders, but I think those have quite some clout in the cryptocoin world.

 

[warpus]

All this qc/crypto stufff is starting to fly over my head. I'm not sure what to believe anymore. Some people seem to be saying some blockchains are already QC proof, some seem to be saying blockchains can be upgraded to be QC proof in the future if need be, and some seem to be saying this is going to be a big problem for all blockchains at some point in the future.

It also seems to me that if QCs capable of taking down blockchains ever come into existence, that it will affect a lot more than just that.

 

[Samson]

You would need to do that before anybody has a quantum computer

I think the idea is that it can happen after the creation of the quantum computer, as long as you do not reuse addresses (no one does that, right ) and the QC cannot crack the key AND get their transactions on the chain faster than you can get your transactions on the chain. If they have both Shor's and Grover's algorithms then they may have more chance, otherwise they would have to compete purely on fees.

 

[uppi]

All this qc/crypto stufff is starting to fly over my head. I'm not sure what to believe anymore. Some people seem to be saying some blockchains are already QC proof, some seem to be saying blockchains can be upgraded to be QC proof in the future if need be, and some seem to be saying this is going to be a big problem for all blockchains at some point in the future.

Anybody saying that blockchains in general are QC-proof doesn't know what they are talking about. It is true that you can at least harden a specific blockchain against quantum computing. It is hard to say whether anything is QC-proof, because we don't know exactly what QC can and cannot do. The only thing we do know is that almost all current blockchains rely on the one problem for which we have an efficient quantum algorithm to solve it.

It also seems to me that if QCs capable of taking down blockchains ever come into existence, that it will affect a lot more than just that.

Yes. With our current encryption algorithms, a working QC would be a security meltdown all over the internet.

I think the idea is that it can happen after the creation of the quantum computer, as long as you do not reuse addresses (no one does that, right ) and the QC cannot crack the key AND get their transactions on the chain faster than you can get your transactions on the chain. If they have both Shor's and Grover's algorithms then they may have more chance, otherwise they would have to compete purely on fees.

Addresses don't matter, I think, because they are public knowledge on the blockchain. Obviously, you might have a time window between it becoming public knowledge that there is a working QC and someone using it to empty your address. I don't think any technical details matter here, only how fast you act. Once there is sufficiently capable QC, you have to assume that somebody else has access to all your keys and can sign any transaction in your name.

 

[Samson]

Addresses don't matter, I think, because they are public knowledge on the blockchain. Obviously, you might have a time window between it becoming public knowledge that there is a working QC and someone using it to empty your address. I don't think any technical details matter here, only how fast you act. Once there is sufficiently capable QC, you have to assume that somebody else has access to all your keys.

It is public keys that matter. If you have never spent coins from an address no one knows the public key. Whenever you spend some bitcoin, you send all of one or more transactions out with the public key of the originating wallet, send exactly the right amount to who you are sending to, and return the change to an address you control. You can sent it back to the same address, and that is convenient as it allows you to keep all your coins in one. However it helps other analyse your behaviour, as it proves that multiple transactions are made by the same person, and it helps QC by telling them your private key. You can send the output to a new address, and avoid that problem but are likely to end up with loads of wallets with bits of coins in them.

 

[warpus]

Anybody saying that blockchains in general are QC-proof doesn't know what they are talking about.

By that do we assume Forbes hires writers to write about crypto who have no idea what they're talking about? Not that I think Forbes is some magical fortress of truth, but it seems like a somewhat reputable publication.

Not that I don't trust you or anything, but now my dilema is: If I can't trust the people Forbes hires to write their articles, then surely it's even harder to trust some posters on a forum. So I'm back to: "I don't know what to think about this really"

 

[innonimatu]

Ban them all. The sooner this crazy mania is ended, the more contained the damage of it blowing.

A thing that burns $1 billion each month now and has no real use will blow, and all the billions burns will be some people's finally acknowledged losses.

Albania fell into anarchy when the Ponzi schemes there reached their inevitable end...

 

[uppi]

It is public keys that matter. If you have never spent coins from an address no one knows the public key. Whenever you spend some bitcoin, you send all of one or more transactions out with the public key of the originating wallet, send exactly the right amount to who you are sending to, and return the change to an address you control. You can sent it back to the same address, and that is convenient as it allows you to keep all your coins in one. However it helps other analyse your behaviour, as it proves that multiple transactions are made by the same person, and it helps QC by telling them your private key. You can send the output to a new address, and avoid that problem but are likely to end up with loads of wallets with bits of coins in them.

Ah, I see, the address is the hash of the public key. So yeah, an unused address would still be mostly secure. The moment you use it, it would become crackable (with the added danger that an attacker could outrace your transaction). But keeping a zillion addresses around seems rather impractical after some time. And regarding the traceability, you just add a layer of obfuscation, because you always leave behind a trail of your addresses on the public record to analyse.

By that do we assume Forbes hires writers to write about crypto who have no idea what they're talking about? Not that I think Forbes is some magical fortress of truth, but it seems like a somewhat reputable publication.

Not that I don't trust you or anything, but now my dilema is: If I can't trust the people Forbes hires to write their articles, then surely it's even harder to trust some posters on a forum. So I'm back to: "I don't know what to think about this really"

Never trust a journalist to get any scientific or mathematical facts right. But in any case, the Forbes article does admit that a capable quantum computer would compromise the security of blockchains. They just try to spin it that it is not a problem right now, because such a computer does not exist (for all we know).

 

[Birdjaguar]

Never trust a journalist to get any scientific or mathematical facts right. But in any case, the Forbes article does admit that a capable quantum computer would compromise the security of blockchains. They just try to spin it that it is not a problem right now, because such a computer does not exist (for all we know).

It seems reasonable to me that we can say that until said QC is build nobody actually knows. In the meanwhile we trust who we deem reliable. Forbes and WSJ and Bloomberg seem pretty reliable on business related tech news or at lest more reliable than most other sources.

 

[Anysense]

Isn't the value of a commodity determined by seller vs buyer dynamics and how much people are willing to pay for it?

I'm not an economist, but I thought it was "something like that"

You conflated (or confused) price and value.