Bitcoin's Event Horizon

I’m incredibly neurotic. I have phobias about people. I have phobias about flying. I have phobias about sanitation. I have phobias about phobias. They’re not even phobias in the clinical sense of the word, more of a euphemism for my complete mistrust in other people’s judgement or intellectual capacity. For instance, I can’t help but imagine the veritable ecosystem of fecal matter on people’s belts, probably the most overlooked shitstained never-washed piece of attire that is relentlessly manipulated by shit-covered hands. Who washes their hands before putting their belt back together? Right. Nobody.

It’s a miserable existence when your brain imposes worst-case scenarios onto everything that crosses your mind, borne of a lifetime of suffering at the hands of most people’s incredible self-assured ignorance and ability to overlook critical details in ubiquitous spates of laziness/thoughtlessness. Human apathy and greed destroys so many lives.

To make matters worse, the world is dramatically increasing in complexity, creating a massive digital-literacy gap between those that keep up with technology, and those that listen to 80s music. We’re advancing so rapidly with AI and DeFi, enabling sophisticated actors to exponentially harvest wealth opportunities in unseen poorly-understood interconnected ways that we all feel but can’t understand how, making life so much harder for those below the tech-savvy line. I'm quite certain my parents will starve to death eventually.

Which brings me to shit-covered Bitcoin. It’s been far too long since I did a hit piece and it’s time to represent. I will first reiterate my stance that Bitcoin will continue its long-running escalation into the Ponzi hall of fame as the grandest and most sensational Ponzi that has ever been, by faaaaaaaar; replete with mouth-foaming lunatic maxis ready to eat your face, reality-bending narratives that can twist your head off your neck, and the widespread consecration of slimy used-car salespeople into supposed thought leaders or visionaries (Madoff got nothing on Saylor). Nobody seems rational, even elected leaders entertaining previously-thought-impossible proposals of government Bitcoin reserves! It makes the Tulip Bubble seem like a blip.

Make no mistake though, this entire Bitcoin mania relies on the simple notion that people truly believe Bitcoin is like gold, if not better; and blindly ignoring the very complicated nuts and bolts that underlie the Bitcoin technology, and…its Achilles Heel.

“Pfffft..”, you raspberry at me. “galgitron, you're so arrogant! Look at the price of Bitcoin! Can't you just accept that you lost?? Bitcoin isn't going anywhere!”

Sit down you single-datapoint dumbfuck. A Bitcoin missile is being built as we speak and I’m going to show it to you whether you want to see it or not. I’m pretty sure I can take all you maxis on at the same time. Like punching down on a whole school of 10-year-olds. Well maybe 9-year-olds. 7 for sure; fucking hate 7-year-olds.

I’ve got some prior blogs that attack Bitcoin on various aspects, and those still stand as relevant even if not played out yet, but this is a special blog that brings to light something virtually nobody understands, nobody acknowledges, and most importantly, nobody cares about:

Quantum Vulnerability

You may have heard about how Chinese scientists recently cracked a 50-bit RSA encryption, but for most of you technically-illiterate shiny-thing buyers, that’s about as meaningless as how your taxes are calculated, and there’s no point even trying to explain it to you because you’d need to be edumacated in math and in particular, cryptography.

Now I’m going to pick on Bitcoin, because it’ll piss off the most people, but most of today’s blockchains are quantum vulnerable, so keep that in mind when you’re trying to posture your token of choice as better, because they will all fall together.

How does quantum computing destroy Bitcoin?

Let’s first talk about what a quantum computer can and can’t do. A quantum computer (QC) isn’t like your PC in any way whatsoever. A QC is a limited series of interrelated bits (called qubits, currently at best in the thousands) that can only do certain types of computing (at least with today's designs), but holy fuck can it ever do it fast. So fast in fact, it’s difficult to even grasp.

One of the very few things a QC is actually very good at is ‘factoring’ large numbers into the original primes (essentially revealing RSA private keys), and QCs can also solve an ECC-based discrete logarithmic problem very quickly to reveal the private key. Again, more gibberish to most people (hey look, Bitcoin went up again! Ignore mode activated).. Stay with me stupid, you really need to get this or you’ll be the one holding the bag and blaming me for not helping because I can’t speak retard.

There’s two primary cryptography aspects of Bitcoin: mining, and digitally signing for UTXO spending or block closing. Mining uses a hashing algorithm called SHA-256. You’ll see lots of Twitter tards talking about how QC will crack SHA-256 and that makes it possible to mine Bitcoins millions of times faster than current technology. This is not true. SHA-256 is NOT something QC is good at, and it would take an incredible number of very expensive QC qubits to even compute a SHA-256 hash. So even if there’s a marginal speedup, this doesn’t make economic sense to spend billions to earn a couple Bitcoin before word gets out that a single computer is taking all the newly minted bitcoins and Bitcoin collapses in mad panic overnight.

That’s right, once it becomes obvious that Bitcoin is compromised by QC (yes, it will necessarily be obvious if it’s to be profitable), it’ll trigger an instant precipitous irreversible and complete lack of confidence in Bitcoin, right down to zero. And I do mean zero.

Bitcoin mining is NOT under threat, and this also means that watching the hashrate for signs of massive increase, will not foretell a quantum attack. This is unfortunately where most technology luddites with a sparse spattering of QC awareness stop with unfounded confidence that Bitcoin is invulnerable to QC attacks, but that couldn’t be further from the truth.

The other cryptography aspect of Bitcoin that IS vulnerable, is how Bitcoin ‘signs’ transactions (spending UTXOs and closing blocks). This is done using a very QC-vulnerable algo called ECDSA secp256k1 (yes, more random madness). This algo is ECC-based, which in retard means QC-smashy-smash.

How this would play out is once QCs can quickly calculate the private keys of Bitcoin public keys, adversaries would then extract a public key (exposed during a transaction) for a high-value UTXO, calculate the private key, and then in the same block, insert a new higher fee transaction that redirects the full balance of that UTXO to the adversary (somewhat analogous to a MEV attack). It would essentially be the same thing as them walking into a bank and withdrawing all the money from your account, and there’s nothing the bank or you can do to stop them. You won’t even have a clue who’s doing it or how they did it. It’ll just be gone.

It may seem the short 10 minute block window would make a successful Bitcoin MEV attack unlikely even with idealized QC technology (limitations on Shor's speed), but 5% of blocks are 30 minutes or longer, plus when the mempool backs up during high Bitcoin network volume, it could be hours of public key exposure; more than enough time to crack the public keys.

And another attack vector is created by multisig accounts. Due to the complexity of rotating keys, which involves coordinated efforts by keyholders for that account, it's not automatic nor typical to rotate all keys after every use, thus key reuse is common in this scenario. That means the first time a transaction is made from the multisig account, those public keys are exposed and the QC adversary can now take their time cracking the private keys to be able to drain the remaining UTXO funds in a later block. This is particularly egregious because not only will that provide an earlier opening for more nascent QC technologies to begin nefarious activities, but multisig accounts typically harbor much larger balances (think CEX hot wallet), so the potential booty size makes these attacks quite likely with catastrophic consequences for presumably many users.

But but galgitron, we’re nowhere near that level of QC technology! It’ll take decades to get there!

The first flight in history by the Wright Brothers was in 1906. Humans landed on the fucking MOON just 63 years later. Don’t complacently bury your head in the sand. The global race for Quantum Computing is on with fervor, and there are no guardrails. It’s coming. Take a good look at this proposed quantum threat chart for cracking RSA in just 24 hours.

But but galgitron, that chart still shows the threat being a long ways away!

Yes and no. The chart shows estimates of how long before QC can crack RSA-2048, but Bitcoin’s dirty little secret is that it uses ECC-256 to sign transactions which is significantly quicker to crack for a QC. Some of you might do some crayon math on your retard napkin to estimate 8 times faster, but it's more likely 10-20x times faster at least! And far fewer qubits required. This means we are much closer to a QC that can crack Bitcoin than that chart suggests.

But but galgitron, why would they attack Bitcoin?

Billions of dollars worth of bitcoins they could steal, plus they could short the market knowing it would collapse. Do I really need to explain this? There’s very few QC targets as lucrative as Bitcoin. And that’s not even considering the economic warfare aspect. Imagine if all these governments really commit hard to Bitcoin reserves and a North Korean QC smashes Bitcoin to shreds! Whut??!

And like I said, QC is only good at certain things. Everyone wants to think of a QC as a super PC, but that's not how it works. For example, it's hard to see how a QC would enable a literal bank robbery. There's not just a single encrypted wall between adversary and money in that scenario, so robbing banks with QC doesn't make sense. No, QC can really only target value solely protected by encryption.

But but galgitron, they would just update the Bitcoin software to protect against this, wouldn’t they?

This is the never-ending ongoing myth about Bitcoin, that the software can be updated. It’s quite difficult to explain to non-techie retards why the nature of decentralized code makes it so hard to update the code. Especially when you have many examples of rolling out soft updates all the time. To try to explain, there’s the notion of hard or soft types of updates. Soft updates are defined by their compatibility with the historical Bitcoin blockchain and without breaking non-updated clients, whereas hard updates result in a fork, as we’ve seen throughout history with so many Bitcoin forks, the prevailing winning fork retaining the official name of Bitcoin, always being whichever one was the most profitable for the miners; no miners, no blockchain, right? This is why the evolution of Bitcoin has never led to increased block sizes because that’s not as profitable as making people pay more to be included in a smaller block.

In the past, soft forks were used to introduce enhancements to Bitcoin that remained backwards compatible, but still required all nodes to update their software at the same time. Over the years however, many more proprietary variations of the client have been created for specific use cases and now the idea of updating all clients simultaneously no longer exists because it would be near impossible to get all versions out in the wild updated simultaneously so they aren't broken when the blocks come in with a new format. That means only soft forks that are not only backwards compatible, but also 'forward' compatible can be allowed, and that is far trickier to accomplish without requiring a hard fork, or at least pending-activation-code multiple-stage soft-fork releases that take a long time to saturate into the ecosystem before they can be turned on, like Segwit did.

Soft-fork Ideas like:

• Block any transactions with a duplicate public key in the same block

This fails because the private key is still calculated and the adversary can just try again in following blocks until the original owner gives up

• Only accept the first version of the transaction if the higher fee one looks suspicious

This fails because it would be asking the miners to police Bitcoin at their expense (give up the higher fee from the adversary based on gameable criteria), plus the technique of inserting a higher fee duplicate transaction is the current technique for canceling/altering a pending transaction (RBF, replace-by-fee), and can be legitimate.

• Somehow hide the public key

They tried to keep the public key as hidden as possible, but at some point it unavoidably needs to be exposed to be able to verify it for inclusion into the block, and that's the vulnerability being exploited.

Yes, there are new quantum-resistant signing algorithms, most notably the NIST winners such as Crystals Dilithium, which do not rely upon prime number factors or discrete log problem (wake up, I’m still talking), but these algos are 100% completely incompatible with the existing 15-year history of the Bitcoin blockchain, thus converting to QC-resistant algos, would in-effect be a HARD FORKING change because it wouldn't be possible for existing clients to understand QC-safe blocks or transactions, essentially creating an entirely new product. Said another way, it would COMPETE with the existing Bitcoin, just like all the rancid Bitcoin Cash, Bitcoin banana, Bitcoin your-mother, etc. variants did. Hard forks create doppelgangers, not actually update Bitcoin as it is.

But let’s just say for sake of argument (and survival), EVERYONE agrees that we need to use the new QC-safe version of Bitcoin and the old version dies off completely, and simultaneously all hardware wallet vendors update their hardware to work with the new QC-safe version of Bitcoin, AND, everyone that uses a hardware wallet buys the new QC-safe version. Here’s the problem with that strategy, while new transactions might be safe, the history is not. All those unspent Bitcoin balances (UTXOs) REMAIN vulnerable to being stolen WHEN THEY ARE MOVED, until they are successfully moved to a QC-safe address, so they must be moved before the QC threat is feasible. THIS MEANS,

Every

Single

Unspent

Bitcoin

Must

Be

Moved

To

Safety

By

Their

Owners

In what universe do you live in where this massive coordinated migration effort required by millions of technically-stunted retards do you imagine this playing out non-catastrophically?? Give me a break. So many people will be left behind, and their coins stolen when they eventually decide to sell, or pass them on to their family, etc.

But but galgitron, couldn’t the new version of QC-safe Bitcoin just move everyone’s Bitcoin to safety for them?? Some kind of a rollup checkpoint??

No. Because a QC-safe address will require new private keys, and only the person that owns the Bitcoin should ever be the one to generate those keys, not some centralized migration effort, otherwise, you’re just centralizing the trust that nobody else will have seen your new keys. How would you even get those new keys to the millions of anonymous owners in a safe manner? You can’t use any method that involves their prior keys for the same reasons they need to move the coins in the first place, they’d be exposed to QC cracking.

No, it would literally take every single person that has Bitcoins to proactively generate new QC-safe keys, and then personally move their Bitcoins to a safe address. How many people would actually do this? How many people ‘could’ do this? How many people wouldn’t even know they need to do this and remain exposed?

This will not only be impossible for most Bitcoin owners to comprehend, but even trying to suggest this strategy would just shake everyone’s confidence and lead to a biblical exodus from Bitcoin that would death-spiral spectacularly into full black-hole collapse.

But but galgitron, couldn’t we just add more bits to 2048, or even higher to keep ahead of the QC threat?

Again, for the exact same reasons I outlined above, this would be a hard fork, still requiring all Bitcoins be moved to safety. Not happening.

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What does this all mean for Bitcoin?

There is no escape from its current QC-vulnerable form, and therefore Bitcoin’s days are numbered, and not because of hype, not because of FUD, not because of competition, not because of the economy, but solely because the Achilles Heel of Bitcoin is mathematically-exposed, no matter how badly everyone wants to ignore this plain and simple fact.

For now, ignoring it is easy, especially when compounded with the dizzying effects of master-shyster-level con men like Saylor or other not-worth-mentioning grifters that just keep your eye on the prize, it’s become a religion, and blind faith combined with room to grow is keeping this massive Bitcon Ponzi afloat.

But that will change. The threat of Bitcoin’s QC-vulnerability will continue to amplify in awareness as time passes, with more assholes like me breaking it down for retards everywhere, scaring the bejeezuz out of their simple little minds, and before you know it, people will start to get antsy, unable to look away from Bitcoin’s shit-covered belt, wondering just how much longer till the axe actually falls.

Do you really think people are going to wait till there’s clear signs that a QC attack has occurred before they exit? Dream on. Crypto holders are the most squeamish people on Earth, and if the narrative of QC-vulnerability becomes better known, well, the rush to get out will start long before there’s even a real threat. In fact, the growing QC threat alone could magnify the post-bull bear and make any future bulls difficult to encourage, long before the QC threat is imminent.

Enjoy it while it lasts, and sure we can possibly have a few more cycles before QC reaches a realistic threat level, but keep it in the back of your mind that at any moment, some North Korean dictator, or Russian oligarch, Iranian state-funded mad-scientist, or some other well-financed adversary building a QC Manhattan project in secret, or even just an unanticipated lunar leap in QC technology brings us ever so closer, until QC actually makes it to the technology plateau needed to crack Bitcoin’s signing keys, and these bad actors just start stealing people’s bitcoins and selling like mad before word gets out and Bitcoin implodes. There will be zero warning, and you won’t be capable of exiting before all the hedge fund Terminator bots have sucked every last drop of tardy liquidity out of the markets. Instant collapse. I predict that as people soon become more and more aware of this threat over the coming years, even just a whiff of compelling fake news suggesting that QC has successfully attacked blockchain, will send the markets into turmoil.

Quantum Computing is the missile that will turn the worldwide runaway Bitcoin experiment into ashes, along with a host of other blockchains. I won’t suggest any purportedly QC-safe blockchains here because I honestly don’t yet trust these far more complex implementations until enough battle-testing has occurred, but rest-assured, first generation blockchains won’t be around as long as gold will continue being, which is why promoting Bitcoin like digital gold, is the gospel of retards.

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Comments welcome on Twitter (not X, fuck X, X is so stupid)

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