Bitcoin - steer clear or not?

sonandheir said:
If quantum does crack Bitcoin the real issue then is not the 0.1% of weath stored in Bitcoin but the other 99.9% of Wealth that is stored with much lower encryption then Bitcoin.
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Bitcoin value is stored in transaction outputs. These outputs can have widely different values. They are all protected by the same public/private keys.

If someone had a secret quantum computer, they would most likely target the highest value outputs first. If they could break 1 output per hour, then it would still take ages for them to steal. There are over 100 million outputs, so that would be over 10,000 years.

Unless someone has an output which is one of the high value ones, they are unlikely to be hit in the initial wave and should have a chance to move their coins to quantum resistant outputs.

Banks and other financial institutions would probably take their websites offline for a while if a quantum computer was announced. People would have to visit the branches. Credit and debit cards would have problems.

A thing to bear in mind is that it is likely that one of the companies spending billions on quantum research will win the race to making the first viable quantum computer. Those companies are unlikely to throw their new piece of hardware at stealing cryptocurrency. They might sell quantum computers to people who do though.
 
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