Bitcoin has fallen sharply by 6% since reaching an all-time high last week, despite an optimistic forecast by US Vice President J.D. Vance for the value of the popular cryptocurrency, writes forbes.com.
The price of Bitcoin has soared over the past two years, thanks to its acceptance by Wall Street, under the leadership of the world's largest asset manager BlackRock, and by US President Donald Trump.
While fears are currently running high that the US dollar may be on the verge of collapse, BlackRock's dire warning that quantum computing could pose an existential risk to Bitcoin has been sharply reinforced by a Google investigative article that found that quantum computers breaking encryption may be much closer to that, than previously thought.
BlackRock CEO Larry Fink has emerged as one of the most bullish voices in support of "more Bitcoin on Wall Street", which has helped drive the bitcoin price boom.
"This is a 20x reduction in the number of qubits from our previous estimate," wrote Google Quantum AI expert Craig Gidney, referring to the number of qubits on quantum computers needed to break a public-key encryption algorithm similar to the one used by Bitcoin.
"If this is even partially true, combined with everything else going on right now, the only safe bet is hard assets and, dare I say it, gold,", responded investor Chamath Palihapitiya, a vocal a bitcoin supporter who claims he first bought a bit when bitcoin was just $100.
Earlier this month, BlackRock quietly added a serious warning about quantum computing to the list of risks for its massive spot bitcoin exchange-traded fund (ETF).
BlackRock, which manages about $10 trillion in assets for investors, has led Wall Street’s push to launch its long-awaited spot bitcoin ETF in 2023, with a set of funds set to debut in January 2024.
The fund now holds about 3% of the 21 million bitcoins in existence, worth $70 billion at bitcoin’s current price, which some say could give BlackRock excessive control over the network.
„If quantum "If quantum computing advances, it could potentially undermine the viability of many of the cryptographic algorithms used in the world's information technology infrastructure, including the cryptographic algorithms used for digital assets like bitcoin," BlackRock said in an amended regulatory filing for its bitcoin fund.
The risk of quantum computing for bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies has recently increased dramatically, with tech giants including Google making advances in quantum computing research.
“At this point, no blockchain network is ready to withstand a quantum attack if it were to become a reality, and that could happen much sooner than 2030,“ said David Carvalho, CEO of decentralized post-quantum blockchain infrastructure Naoris Protocol, saying that bitcoin is “sleepwalking” disaster“.
Source: www.forbes.com