SHA-256 is trending on deadbird. Apparently we can crack it with 8,000 quantum chips in 2-5 years.
SHA-2048 enters the room.
Discussion
I thought quantum was a threat to ecdsa
It’s a threat to both, ecdsa will probably be cracked first
You have to attack the signatures to attack Bitcoin transfers, so yes. Determining the private key that generated a public key is the holy grail of cryptography.
No one gets anything out of reversing a sha256 hash. Passwords have their own hashing schemes that would also be a target.
If a SHA256 zero day is found transaction fees will be higher than we've ever seen. Would be nice to have the option for higher level encryption now to get ahead of it. I have no doubt that it will be a problem eventually.
Is bitcoin going to be left scrambling for a fix?
Do we have new miners ready to go in the new algo?
Who’s ready for long delays in confirmations?
I don't view this as imminent. But bitcoiners think on very long term time horizons so it is within that scope IMO--Moore's Law. I suspect at some point we'll start seeing the option to create keys at higher encryption levels. 🤷
Valid questions