For Carter, no crypto asset would survive if bitcoin is attacked by quantum computing.
The specialist is not a supporter of so-called privacy cryptocurrencies.
Nic Carter, co-founder of CoinMetrics and financial researcher, recently launched a message about the relationship between bitcoin (BTC) and cryptocurrencies, casting doubt on the idea that some could prosper if BTC were to disappear.
According to Carter, this idea is incorrect: «One of the biggest fallacies is to think that your cryptocurrency will win if only bitcoin dies… It is precisely the opposite. If BTC dies, no one will ever trust internet money again. All currencies depend on the prestige of bitcoin.
With these words, the researcher emphasizes that the credibility of any cryptoasset is closely linked to the survival of Satoshi’s creation.
From this premise, Carter also pointed out how some projects face additional challenges due to their own characteristics. In particular, referring to zcash (ZEC), warned that if some cryptographic failure took down bitcoin, no one would trust a much more complex currency that already suffered a massive inflation bug.
The aforementioned bug dates back to 2018, when it was discovered by an employee of Zcash Company (officially called Electric Coin CompanyECC) on March 1 of that year. As CriptoNoticias reported, it was a critical vulnerability in the system that allowed the unlimited creation of ZEC tokens.
In this context he highlighted: «A currency like ZEC with protected transactions will never be as credible as a transparent currency due to the fundamental commitment to auditability. “There will always be questions about it due to the frequency of inflation bugs in all major currencies and the much larger attack surface.”
Privacy yes, but at what price?
Carter clarified that his position It is not exclusive to ZEC, but a general approach to confidentiality in cryptocurrency networks: In his opinion, “privacy is a luxury that is incompatible with auditability”, which he considers fundamental. He clarified that he adopted this conviction a long time ago, after observing inflation errors in initiatives such as BTC, monero (XMR) and the same ZEC.
In addition, he responded to comments from specialists. Pierre-Luc Dallaire-Demers, founder of Pauli Group, a company focused on post-quantum cryptography, manifested that «ZEC, in reality, is not resistant to quantum computing. “Its attack range is smaller than Bitcoin’s, but it still relies on elliptic curves for SNARKs.”
Here it is worth highlighting that zk-SNARKs, known as zero-knowledge proofs, allow zcash to protect your transactions and offer total privacy. This facilitates demonstrate that certain information is valid without revealing that information itself.
For its part, elliptic curves are the type of mathematics that protects almost all current cryptocurrencies, including zcash. It is the basis of digital signatures and public/private keys.
Given this clarification, the co-founder of CoinMetrics explained: “I said it the other day and got angry DMs and tweets from everyone who was ever affiliated with Zcash.”