According to PANews, a study by the University of Kent's School of Computing suggests that Bitcoin may need a protocol update to effectively counter threats posed by quantum computing. This update could result in the cryptocurrency being offline for 76 days. The research also presents a more practical approach, where Bitcoin could allocate 25% of its servers for the update, allowing users to continue mining and trading at a slower pace. However, this scenario would extend the downtime to 305 days, or approximately 10 months.
Carlos Perez-Delgado, a lecturer at the University of Kent, indicated that the exact cost of such downtime is difficult to determine but could be staggering. Data from the Ponemon Institute suggests that an hour of downtime could cost businesses up to $500,000. If Bitcoin were to experience 76 days of downtime, considered the best-case scenario by the study, the update cost could reach $912 million. Perez-Delgado emphasized in an interview that even a few minutes or hours of downtime can be extremely costly. The study highlights that updating systems like Bitcoin could take days, weeks, or even months. Despite the slow and expensive nature of this process, Perez-Delgado believes it is necessary given the emerging and potentially imminent threat of quantum technology, which could easily break the encryption codes protecting vast amounts of online data.
Perez-Delgado is not attempting to incite fear. IBM predicts that within this decade, we are unlikely to have quantum computers large enough to threaten current encryption forms, making the threat to cryptography hypothetical for now. However, Perez-Delgado warns that if quantum computers do become a threat, all tech companies must take proactive measures.
