Rumors of bitcoin’s demise have been greatly exaggerated. According to a site tracking “ #bitcoin obituaries,” the media has proclaimed the seven-year-old cryptocurrency dead more than 100 times, yet a recent resurgence has led to a tripling in bitcoin’s price over the last year. It has survived price crashes, cyber heists and community infighting, but bitcoin’s biggest threat may still be lying dormant: #quantumcomputers. Since they were first theorized by the physicist Richard Feynman in 1982, quantum computers have promised to bring about a new era of computing. It is only relatively recently that theory has translated into significant real-world advances, with the likes of #Google, #NASA and the #CIA working towards building a quantum computer. Computer scientists are now warning that the arrival of the ultra-powerful machines will cripple current encryption methods and as a result bring a close to the great bitcoin experiment—collapsing the technological foundations that bitcoin is built upon.
http://www.newsweek.com/quantum-computers-kill-bitcoin-cryptocurrency-509053
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