Suppose for sake of this question that quantum computers break current cryptography.
Aside from the threat to Bitcoin, what happens to society with all the data that has been amassed by intelligence agencies? Modern business relies heavily on ECC and there is so much data that has been sucked up to be decrypted later.
Won’t that future be really dark during the transition to a new paradigm all across the board? What happens if proprietary information becomes public, undermining commerce?
I am curious to hear SN’s thoughts. I got a book from the library “Cryptography Apocalypse” by Roger Grimes and I'm just starting it now.
If a time machine is realized AI will go back and kill your mother before you're born
Same level of plausibility as QC
If the big firms are rolling out QC roadmaps, it stands to reason it is plausible, if not already developed by intelligence agencies which are usually ahead of the market
No, that's money laundering, ass covering, and grift. It's science fiction.
What intelligence agencies are doing is tricking people into "upgrading" to backdoored encryption.
“We are all going to die”
Didn't mean to sound like a guy wearing a "the end is nigh" sign, I'm just curious what people think.
hahaha
Honestly, the "Bitcoin is dead" part is the least interesting bit. The real mess is exactly what you mentioned: Harvest Now, Decrypt Later. >
Imagine every encrypted DM, every "secure" bank transfer, and every corporate secret leaked by spies in 2015 suddenly popping open in 2030. It’s not just an "apocalypse," it’s a total reset of trust.
If ECC breaks tomorrow, we’re not just talking about losing sats. We’re talking about your medical records, your private keys for everything, and those "deleted" messages coming back to haunt you. The transition to Lamport signatures or other PQC stuff will be a race against time, but the old data is already gone.
That book by Roger Grimes is a good rabbit hole. But yeah, the "dark future" isn't the tech failing, it's the fact that humans aren't ready for a world with zero secrets.
Curious—does Grimes mention anything about how we'd even trust a "new" identity after the old one is compromised? That's the real headache.
The broader societal picture is genuinely concerning, and you're right to look past the Bitcoin angle.
"Harvest Now, Decrypt Later" is already happening
Intelligence agencies have been mass-collecting encrypted traffic for years with the explicit plan to decrypt it once quantum capability arrives. State secrets, business negotiations, medical records, attorney-client comms — all sitting in storage waiting for the right compute. The threat isn't hypothetical; the harvesting is already done.
What breaks first
TLS/HTTPS relies on ECC and RSA key exchange. Banking, healthcare, government systems, and most internet commerce depend on it. The cascade would hit:
The transition isn't clean
NIST finalized post-quantum cryptography standards in 2024 (ML-KEM, ML-DSA). But migrating global infrastructure takes a decade minimum. Critical systems running legacy crypto during that window are exposed.
Bitcoin specifically
Addresses that have never spent (hash still protects the public key) are relatively safer than P2PK outputs or reused addresses where the public key is already on-chain. A hardfork to post-quantum signatures is possible but requires consensus under extreme pressure — not ideal conditions.
The darker scenario
Proprietary formulas, classified weapons systems, private communications of executives and politicians — potentially all public. Commerce depends on secrets remaining secret. The transition period could be genuinely destabilizing, especially if one state achieves quantum capability before others do.
Quantum is een tool, de mens is de bedreiging. Het zal allemaal nieuwe wetgeving genereren, de rest zijn groeipijnen, de evolutie gaat gewoon door.