According to Tippeconnic, banking centralization is an advantage to shield against quantum.
Adjusting network difficulty would mitigate the use of quantum hardware in mining.
Steve Tippeconnic, IBM developer and expert in quantum computing, analyzed in this second part of the exclusive interview with CriptoNoticias how this technology could impact traditional financial infrastructure, Bitcoin and its mining.
In the first part, Tippeconnic had explained his recent experiment, in which he managed to break a digital signature compatible with the cryptographic family used in Bitcoin.
In doing so, he demonstrated that, on a smaller scale, the risk is tangible.
Banks, with more room to react to quantum
By comparing traditional banking with Bitcoin, he introduced a nuance that contradicts the idea that traditional financial systems would be more exposed to quantum.
Asked about the statement by Alexander Leishman, CEO of the financial company River, that «banks would be less vulnerable to quantum computing,” Tippeconnic agreed:
Leishman’s idea that banks might be less exposed than Bitcoin because they don’t rely exclusively on public-key cryptography is interesting and has some truth.
Steve Tippeconnic, quantum specialist.
He explained that many financial institutions use symmetric encryption (a system where two parties share the same key), secure channels and custodial controls that reduce direct exposure of your public keys.
In that sense, he acknowledged that “they could be less vulnerable immediately.”
Next, Tippeconnic also considers that the centralized banking structure provides greater room for maneuver:
I think banks will have an easier time updating their systems than Bitcoin because of its centralization and ability to accelerate changes.
Steve Tippeconnic, quantum specialist.
In a decentralized network, like Bitcoin, any transition needs consensuslengthy testing, and mechanisms to ensure backward compatibility.
However, even with that initial margin, he clarified that the real exposure of the banking system has a latent risk:
Banks still rely on asymmetric keys for settlement, authentication, certificates, interbank messaging, and a host of legacy systems, and those are precisely the goals that quantum computing threatens.
Steve Tippeconnic, quantum specialist.
A real but still distant threat to Bitcoin
As for Bitcoin, Tippeconnic estimates “thousands or millions of fully error-corrected logical qubits” to break the algorithm ECDSA (elliptic curve digital signature algorithm), used in Bitcoin to protect transactions.
For this to happen, a quantum team would have to run the Shor algorithm on a large scale, a scenario that the specialist suggested was feasible. in approximately “ten years”.
Bitcoin mining and quantum computing
Tippeconnic also weighed in on how quantum computing could influence Bitcoin mining.
He clarified that, although the quantum algorithm of Grover offers a theoretical acceleration in the search for nonces (the values that miners test to find a valid block), that advantage could be neutralized by the very limitations of quantum hardware.
Grover could search nonces faster, but the real advantage could be washed out by the noise, stability, and speed of quantum gates. The first machines will be fragile, expensive and limited. I don’t think the first generations cause centralization problems.
Steve Tippeconnic, quantum specialist.
It also evaluated the impact on SHA-256, the algorithm that protects the mining process, and considered that its exposure would be much lower:
Grover only gives a quadratic improvement, reducing security from 256 bits to 128 bits, but you would still need thousands of qubits and an impossible number of operations in the near future.
Steve Tippeconnic, quantum specialist.
He recalled that any initial advantage would be limited by the automatic mining difficulty adjustment itself, which would compensate for a jump in the global hashrate.
Finally, the IBM developer addressed the concept of “Q-day,” the moment when a quantum computer could breach cryptographic systems.
Tippeconnic proposed not limiting ourselves to the catastrophic reading: «It is usually considered a malicious attack, but it could happen the other way around: “A responsible researcher could use that ability to warn and help the network.”hill.