Safeguarding cryptocurrency by disclosing quantum vulnerabilities responsibly

madars 30 points 3 comments March 31, 2026
research.google · View on Hacker News

Discussion Highlights (3 comments)

DoctorOetker

> [...] including transitioning blockchains to post-quantum cryptography (PQC), which is resistant to quantum attacks. PQC is not defined as "being resistant to quantum attacks" nor does it necessarily have this property: PQC is just cryptography for which no quantum attack is known yet (for example even when no one has tried to design a quantum computation to break the cryptography). One can not demonstrate that a specific PQC altorithm is resistant to quantum attacks, it is merely presumed until proven otherwise.

spr-alex

Beware the Ides of march: this is 1 of 2 cryptographic doom papers that was released this week. This google paper with Babbush, Gidney, Boneh is authoritative. And we also have another with Preskill and Hsin-Yuan Huang (widely cited for classical shadows among other quantum work) among others: https://arxiv.org/pdf/2603.28627 "Here, by leveraging advances in high-rate quantum error-correcting codes, efficient logical instruction sets, and circuit design, we show that Shor’s algorithm can be executed at cryptographically relevant scales with as few as 10,000 reconfigurable atomic qubits. " That's physical, not logical qubits.

dandanua

Why do they care about cryptocurrencies but not about the entire world's infrastructures that are based on RSA and elliptic curve algorithms, such as HTTPS and many other electronic signature solutions? Is this a case of cryptocurrency market manipulation? And why do they think that the US government would care about securing cryptocurrencies? Aren't they designed to circumvent the government regulation?

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