Latest / Simply Bitcoin / Will Quantum Computing Send Bitcoin to Zero? | Beyond Bitcoin
Transcript
- 0:00Imagine a supercomputer so powerful it could crack the
- 0:03locks on your bank account, your passwords, your Netflix queue
- 0:07and even your Bitcoin. We're talking quantum computers
- 0:11and the Internet's toughest security system, a little thing
- 0:14called Shaw 256. Honey, where is the flashlight?
- 0:19Are you recording in the bathroom again?
- 0:21Excuse me for a second, is this the end of your online privacy?
- 0:28Is your Bitcoin going to zero? Are we out of milk?
- 0:36Is this all just hyped up? sci-fi scare from unwatchable
- 0:39Bitcoin clickbait video. What do you think Johnny Bingo
- 0:414062 This video is going to be wild, juicy and easy to get.
- 0:46No tech degree needed, just a love for drama and a curiosity
- 0:50about the future. I'm oceans this is beyond
- 0:52Bitcoin. Let's have a glimpse into our
- 0:54future, shall we? We're going to talk mostly about
- 1:02the hash functions that are used routinely in cryptography for
- 1:05things like message authentication, digital
- 1:08signatures, and so on. So they need to be fairly quick
- 1:11both to verify and compute. A hash function takes some
- 1:13string right, let's say ABC, and it turns it into some fixed
- 1:19length string, but it's not usually 3 long of random.
- 1:22So you know a bit string, right? But so so you naughty 11
- 1:26naughty, naughty one naughty 11 dot dot dot going forward this
- 1:29way for however many bits that hash function is.
- 1:31Now there's a few important properties of hash functions
- 1:34that we care about for cryptography, but the most
- 1:36important one perhaps is that it's essentially pseudo random.
- 1:39So that means that we put in ABC and we get out something that is
- 1:42in no way like ABC and appears completely random to us.
- 1:45And if we change this even slightly, because it's appearing
- 1:48random, this is completely changed.
- 1:50So let's have a quick look at SHA one as an example, just so
- 1:53we can see this in action. I'm on some page that has a
- 1:55script that calculates hashes on the fly.
- 1:58So I can put in ABC, and you can see that the hash is a 9993 E
- 2:04and so on all the way up to D, right?
- 2:06This is the SHA 1 hash. A SHA 1 hash is 160 bits long.
- 2:10If I change this C to AD, the hash is completely changed.
- 2:14So there's the appearance of randomness, the idea that this
- 2:18hash is actually not related to this at all, even though it is,
- 2:21and we know it is, because if I put C back again, we're back to
- 2:25A9993. OK, picture this.
- 2:28Every time you want to shop online or send an e-mail or
- 2:31check your bank balance, there's a digital lock keeping your
- 2:35stuff safe. That lock is called Shaw 256,
- 2:38and it's like the Fort Knox of the Internet.
- 2:40But there's a new kid on the block, quantum computers.
- 2:46And experts say that these quantum computers can pick that
- 2:48lock like a master thief in a heist movie.
- 2:51Exactly. Let's start with Shaw 256.
- 2:53Don't let the name scare you. It's just a super fancy metric
- 2:56that protects your digital life. Think of it as the world's
- 2:59toughest lock on your online bank account, your Amazon
- 3:02orders, your spicy DMS. It takes your data and scrambles it into
- 3:07a 64 digit code, which is harder to crack than a billionaire's
- 3:10safe. SHA 256 is actually the backbone
- 3:13of everything secure online, from Bitcoin to your favorite
- 3:17shopping sites. To break this lock, a hacker
- 3:19would have to guess the exact key out of trillions upon
- 3:22trillions of possibilities. And on a regular computer, that
- 3:25would take longer than the universe has been around.
- 3:27If you want to find a message whose SHA 256 hash is some
- 3:31specific string of 256 bits, you have no better method than to
- 3:36just guess and check random messages, and this would require
- 3:40on average 2 to the 256 guesses. Now, this is a number so far
- 3:46removed from anything that we ever deal with that it can be
- 3:48hard to appreciate its size, but let's give it a try. 2 to the
- 3:52256 is the same as two to the 32 multiplied by itself 8 times.
- 3:58Now, what's nice about that split is that 2 to the 32 is 4
- 4:01billion, which is at least a number we can think about,
- 4:04right? It's the kind of thing you might
- 4:05see in a headline. So all we need to do is
- 4:08appreciate what multiplying 4 billion times itself 8
- 4:12successive times really feels like.
- 4:15As many of you know, the GPU on your computer can let you run a
- 4:18whole bunch of computations in parallel incredibly quickly.
- 4:21So if you were to specially program a GPU to run a
- 4:25cryptographic hash function over and over, a really good one
- 4:29might be able to do a little less than a billion hashes per
- 4:31second. And let's say that you just take
- 4:34a bunch of those and cram your computer full of extra GPU's so
- 4:37that your computer can run 4 billion hashes per second.
- 4:41So the first 4 billion here is going to represent the number of
- 4:43hashes per second per computer. Now picture 4 billion of these
- 4:49GPU packed computers for comparison.
- 4:52Even though Google does not at all make their number of servers
- 4:55public, estimates have it somewhere in the single digit
- 4:59millions. In reality, most of those
- 5:01servers are going to be much less powerful than our imagined
- 5:04GPU packed machine. But let's say that Google
- 5:07replaced all of its millions of servers with a machine like
- 5:10this. Then 4 billion machines would
- 5:13mean about 1000 copies of this souped up Google.
- 5:16Let's call that 1K Google worth of computing power.
- 5:20There's about 7.3 billion people on Earth.
- 5:23So next imagine giving a little over half of every individual on
- 5:27Earth their own personal kilo Google.
- 5:31Now imagine 4 billion copies of this Earth.
- 5:36For comparison, the Milky Way has somewhere between 100 and
- 5:39400 billion stars. We don't really know, but the
- 5:41estimates tend to be in that range.
- 5:43So this would be akin to a full 1% of every star in the Galaxy
- 5:48having a copy of Earth, where half the people on that Earth
- 5:51have their own personal killer. Google next try to imagine 4
- 5:56billion copies of the Milky Way, and we're going to call this
- 6:01your giga galactic supercomputer running about two to the 160
- 6:05guesses every second. Now, 4 billion seconds, that's
- 6:10about 126.8 years. 4 billion of those, well, that's 507 billion
- 6:16years, which is about 37 times the age of the universe.
- 6:20So even if you were to have your GPU packed kilogram per person
- 6:24multiplanetary gigagalactic computer guessing numbers for 37
- 6:28times the age of the universe, it would still only have a one
- 6:32in 4 billion chance of finding the correct guess.
- 6:36That's kind. Of what makes Shaw 256 the hero
- 6:38of our digital world. But here comes the villain
- 6:41quantum computers, and they're bringing some serious heat.
- 6:44Let's start with what we know. We understand classical
- 6:46computing. Picture a library of 1000 books
- 6:51and you're hunting for one specific phrase in that entire
- 6:55library. Let's just say the phrase that
- 6:57we're that we're searching for is what is a topological qubit?
- 7:01So a classical processor. Think of it like a librarian.
- 7:07It's very methodical. They grab one book, they flip
- 7:10through every single page. There's no match.
- 7:12So then they move on to the second book as they're looking
- 7:14for this phrase, and one by one they check a thought.
- 7:17Let's just say there's 1000 books in this library.
- 7:20Maybe it's book 10, maybe it's book 999.
- 7:24But this is a serial step by step process that's at work.
- 7:29And this is like your, you know, your classical processors where
- 7:33there's one or, or there's zero on or off, no shortcuts.
- 7:38It's just how your laptop works. Now let's talk about quantum
- 7:41computing. Same library, same thousand
- 7:44books, same phrase that we're searching for.
- 7:46But this librarians like not flipping through the pages.
- 7:49They're able to scan the whole library in one shot, not by
- 7:54opening every book, but by somehow knowing every book's
- 7:57contents all at once. And what they do is they find
- 8:00this phrase, what is topological qubit?
- 8:03What is a topological qubit in a fraction of the steps?
- 8:06So like maybe 32 steps instead of 1000 steps of checking 1000
- 8:11books. So I know this sounds nuts, but
- 8:14this is this is effectively what quantum computing can do.
- 8:17It has massive parallelism. It's not brute force.
- 8:22I'm sure you've heard this, but quantum computers aren't your
- 8:25average laptop. Regular computers, they use
- 8:28bits. They're like a light switch.
- 8:29They're either on or off, one or zero.
- 8:32Now quantum computers, they use qubits.
- 8:35That's Cubert, that qubit, but pretty close.
- 8:38Which can be on and off and everything in between all at
- 8:42once. Basically an immediate
- 8:44understanding of all the possibilities all at once.
- 8:47Can you imagine? It's like juggling 1,000,000
- 8:49balls while riding a unicycle and solving A Rubik's Cube.
- 8:53And it's insanely fast for certain problems.
- 8:55Here's where it gets interesting.
- 8:56Quantum computers use a trick called the Grover's algorithm,
- 9:00which I don't know what it is because I'm not a coder or a
- 9:02software developer. I just look up things on the
- 9:04Internet, like you, but I digress.
- 9:07We could think of it as a cheat code for picking locks.
- 9:09In theory, it could take half the time to crack Shaw 256.
- 9:13Let's say you only have one key that fits one house in the
- 9:16entire world. Well, with quantum computers now
- 9:19you only have to check half the houses in the entire world,
- 9:21which is still quite a lot to crack Shaw 256, but it's half
- 9:25the time, so at least you have that going for you, I guess I
- 9:28have that. It's still a lot, but it's way
- 9:30faster. Today's quantum computers are
- 9:32like prototype sports cars. They're flashy, they go real
- 9:36fast, but they break down after about a lap.
- 9:39They've got maybe 1000 qubits in their super glitchy To crack
- 9:42Shaw 256, you'd need millions of perfect qubits, and we're
- 9:46nowhere close. So are quantum computers about
- 9:48to unlock your Bitcoin and steal all of your life savings?
- 9:53Not so fast. Cracking Shaw 256 with a quantum
- 9:56computer would still take a ridiculous amount of time.
- 10:01Experts say that we're decades away from a quantum computer
- 10:04that's even strong enough to try.
- 10:06And that's sort of like worrying about flying cars crashing into
- 10:09your house today. But let's make this salacious
- 10:11Imagine a secret lab deep underground where mad scientists
- 10:16are building a quantum super weapon.
- 10:18They're cackling, ready to hack the Internet.
- 10:21Sounds like a movie, right? Here's the plot twist.
- 10:23The Internet is not defenseless. Shaw 256 is just one layer of
- 10:27security. Your money, your data, it's
- 10:31protected by a digital fortress with multiple walls.
- 10:34And guess what? The good guys are already
- 10:35building quantum proof locks, so why should you care?
- 10:39Good question. Because this is about more than
- 10:41tech. It's about your money and your
- 10:43privacy and your security online.
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- 11:15your purchase. Great deal.
- 11:17Link in the description below. Quantum computers are coming,
- 11:20but they're not the apocalypse and your Bitcoin is safe.
- 11:23It's been dodging hackers for decades.
- 11:25Scientists, engineers, and even you Bitcoin nerds are working on
- 11:28upgrades to keep your data safe, whether you're buying sneakers
- 11:32or you're stacking Bitcoin. Here's the juicy part.
- 11:35Juicy part. This is a race.
- 11:39On one side, quantum hackers are dreaming of a digital chaos.
- 11:43On the other side, a global army of brainiacs are building
- 11:47unbreakable Shields. And you know what?
- 11:49I'm betting on the good guys. The Internet has survived
- 11:52viruses, scams and the Y2K panic.
- 11:54It'll survive this too. So don't lose sleep.
- 11:57Your passwords, your cash and your cat videos.
- 12:00They're all safe for now. Quantum computers are cool,
- 12:03scary and straight out of a sci-fi movie, but they are not
- 12:06cracking the internet's locks anytime soon.
- 12:08Shaw 256, which is what secures Bitcoin, if you didn't know, is
- 12:12holding strong and we've got time to build even tougher
- 12:15defenses or is this just a SI up?
- 12:17I've been programmed to believe you decide I'm not going to so
- 12:21keep shopping. That's what this is all about
- 12:23shopping. So keep shopping shop to your
- 12:26heart's content and living your digital life without fear.
- 12:29Thank you so much for watching. But real quick, SAS mining makes
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- 13:18I'm just looking at a black circle of mystery, just looking
- 13:23right at me, not saying anything, just recording
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- 13:29My motions. This is beyond Bitcoin.
- 13:31Until next time.