How China could be causing the collapse of Bitcoin

Added: January 6, 2021

Bitcoin is undoubtedly the most biggest and most used cryptocurrency in the world. In short, Bitcoin is encrypted and uses complex mathematical equations to secure its supply and transactions with a system called Blockchain.

Bitcoin’s value has been rising since the beginning of 2020, breaking new records over and over while also exceeding the $30,000 barrier on its 12th anniversary.

Bitcoin is still always at risk, being from doubters or major co-operations. For instance, Google announced in 2019 that it had built a quantum computer which possesses the ability to solve impossible mathematical calculations. This came as shocking news to the world and some even feared that Bitcoin’s security will be exposed to risk. Luckily, this did not stop Bitcoin from breaking records all throughout the year.

Nevertheless, the future of Bitcoin is facing a new threat as China stated that it has matched Google’s “quantum supremacy”. China is well-known to be unfavourable towards Bitcoin and any cryptocurrency or currency which is not centralised.

A team of researchers in China released a statement published in the journal Science that reads: “This achievement firmly established our country’s leading position in international quantum computing research.” The group of researchers claimed that the “Jiuzhang” prototype quantum computer took a little over 3 minutes to complete a task. Comparing that result to a traditional computer, this task would take over 600 million years to be solved by the world’s fastest one.

The rapid development of China and quantum computer research could soon possibly bring forth actual consequences, even though the “Jiuzhang” prototype is still not able to decode encrypted information, according to a quantum researcher on the South China Morning Post.

Many experts around the world shared their thoughts on quantum computing:

Lu Chaoyang, a professor in charge of the experiment at USTC:

“Scientists are close to useful quantum machines that can do something non-trivial.”

Richard Murray, Chief Executive of computing company ORCA:

“There are still people who question whether quantum computers will be a reality. With two systems having achieved this benchmark, that argument is sounding quite unlikely.”

Blockchain and Cryptography researchers at Deloitte said:

“Quantum computers are posing a serious challenge to the security of the bitcoin blockchain. Quantum computers might eventually become so fast that they will undermine the bitcoin transaction process. In this case the security of the bitcoin blockchain will be fundamentally broken.”

“Quantum computing is a very special purpose machine. You may be able to to build [a quantum computer] that can break one form of encryption but there are all sorts of ways to circumvent the threat that quantum computing poses to bitcoin and other such encryption-based technologies.” said George Gilder, expert in technology, economic growth and prosperity, said in the Mind Matters podcast.

AffPapa, Bitcoin, cryptocurrency