

Once a newly standardized post-quantum secure cryptography is built, Groetker said, the process of mass migration will begin.

Groetker said he expects the first standard quantum-safe crypto algorithm by 2024, which is still, as he put it, well before we'd see a quantum computer capable of breaking bitcoin's cryptography. You will have years of time to migrate your funds from one account to another." "There are new and secure algorithms for digital signatures. "It's a technical problem, and there's a technical solution for it," said Groetker. NIST is running that selection process now, picking the best candidates and standardizing them. "The National Institute of Science and Technology (NIST) has been working on a new standard for encryption for the future that's quantum-proof," said Thiel. There is also the fact that the community knows that it is coming, and researchers are already in the process of building quantum-safe cryptography. "It wouldn't be something that happens overnight." "We would have plenty of forewarning if quantum computing was reaching the stage of maturity and sophistication at which it started to threaten our core cryptographic primitives," he said.

Crypto experts told CNBC they aren't all that worried about quantum hacking of bitcoin wallets for a couple of different reasons.Ĭastle Island Ventures founding partner Nic Carter pointed out that quantum breaks would be gradual rather than sudden.
