Jump to content

Recommended Posts

Posted

This doesn't change my fundamental position. If anything, it could mean that the State finally realizes that Bitcoin is no threat to them at all. But I'm sure BTC enthusiasts will like this. Well, compared to what it was said before that the NY State would require from all people transacting in BTC and other cryptocurrencies, at least.

 

http://finance.yahoo.com/news/york-regulator-issues-final-bitcoin-154145433.html

 

Cliffs:

 

* "digital currency companies operating in New York state that hold customer funds and exchange virtual currencies for dollars or other currencies are required to apply for what is known as a state "BitLicense." "

 

* "The rules do not apply to software developers, individual users, customer loyalty programs, gift cards, currency miners, or merchants accepting bitcoin as payment."

 

 

 

EDIT to mods: Oops, I meant to post this in Current Events. Feel free to move.

Posted

I think it may be because governments and corporations are now getting into quantum computers, which renders encryption useless. Anyone who has one of these computers can now print all the bitcoins they want, thereby giving these institutions the power to regulate bitcoin at will. Shit, they don't even know if these things actually work, and Google bought 5 of them at a million dollars a piece. 

Posted

I think it may be because governments and corporations are now getting into quantum computers, which renders encryption useless. Anyone who has one of these computers can now print all the bitcoins they want, thereby giving these institutions the power to regulate bitcoin at will. Shit, they don't even know if these things actually work, and Google bought 5 of them at a million dollars a piece. 

Did some digging and evidently not so for all super of encryptions:

 

http://security.stackexchange.com/questions/48022/what-kinds-of-encryption-are-not-breakable-via-quantum-computers

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Post-quantum_cryptography

https://eprint.iacr.org/2014/709.pdf (painfully detailed analysis on it) :)

 

Disclosure; i am noob and laymen at the subject i hope the information is valid. :)

Posted

I think it may be because governments and corporations are now getting into quantum computers, which renders encryption useless. Anyone who has one of these computers can now print all the bitcoins they want, thereby giving these institutions the power to regulate bitcoin at will. Shit, they don't even know if these things actually work, and Google bought 5 of them at a million dollars a piece. 

 

Encryption has always been a race of complexity versus the cost to overcome that complexity. The massive cost to make quantum computers to do anything productive is representative of their immature technology, but you are right to expect that it will eventually become good enough to deal with today's encryption.

 

But today's parallel computing facilities are also rather effective at dealing with modern encryption. It's all about whether you want to pay for the equipment and power to brute force a message, a stream, or a disk that might have something actionable in it.

 

The NSA could become a first class miner, and perhaps go on to subvert the system, if they wanted to spend the money to do it. A *lot* of money. And what's the payoff?

Posted
 

Did some digging and evidently not so for all super of encryptions:

 

I think the end question will always be "who knows?" It may in fact be the case that the computer does not exist that can decrypt the highest form of encryption. As Shirgall says, it is always a matter of time before someone crosses that barrier. Especially for we layman, I would say it is best to always assume anything on your computer is subject to manipulation by some NSA bigshot, or the average geek in his mom's basement, and that anything dependent upon encryption, like bitcoin, will always eventually be subject to vulnerabilities. 

 

 

Encryption has always been a race of complexity versus the cost to overcome that complexity. The massive cost to make quantum computers to do anything productive is representative of their immature technology, but you are right to expect that it will eventually become good enough to deal with today's encryption.

 

But today's parallel computing facilities are also rather effective at dealing with modern encryption. It's all about whether you want to pay for the equipment and power to brute force a message, a stream, or a disk that might have something actionable in it.

 

The NSA could become a first class miner, and perhaps go on to subvert the system, if they wanted to spend the money to do it. A *lot* of money. And what's the payoff?

 

They get the ability to always expose your wanton traffic to angrymonkeyporn.com?

 

I think it's more about keeping people from developing or utilizing an alternate money supply, really. During the next crash which will start showing up about 2016 here, people will be looking for ways to avoid paying taxes on using USD, and will look to trade in things like bitcoin. If the Fed wants to retain its power, it will want to be able to inflate the shit out of bitcoins to render them impractical. 

 

But also, it's probably about keeping their own monetary system in power. When you go look at the money in your bank account, what you are seeing that you have is "bankers bitcoins". Only about 10% of everyone's digital USD is redeemable in paper dollars. The world runs off these bankers bitcoins, so it would make sense the Fed/banks would want to pursue and practice the highest forms of encryption and decryption, to make sure no one else has the ability to disassemble their system.

Posted

As much strong criticisms as I have of Bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies, the encryption being hacked is not one of them. I admit I'm not very knowledgeable of the specifics involved, but it seems to me that if there was a serious concern of the encryption being hacked, wouldn't developers just come up with a new software upgrade pack that ups the ante as far as encryption goes? Since it costs several orders of magnitude more resources to decrypt a code than to create that same encryption system...

Posted

Calculators function flawless because their systems are so basic and single tasked that they were never really subject to as many variables as you might imagine.

Early NES and SNES games were so basic and single purposed (though seemingly advanced at the time) that they functioned rather flawless though glitches began to surface.

The modern heavily-regulated (ESRB, magazine) mess of a video-game Oligarchy industry has recently been producing some of the most inexcusable glitch-fests the world has ever seen. The more advanced these video games become, the more variables they become subject too, and the more glitches and freezes and crashes that occur, as processing power is now multi-tasked to many areas, instead of focused on a single purpose.

Much like the idiot savant who can do computer-like mathematical calculations, but can't seem to perform basic functions, the processing power is all condensed into a single area.

The more advanced a computer becomes, the more prone to error. The more advanced decryption becomes, the more advanced encryption becomes. The two will evolve, and likely with encryption always being one step ahead. Regardless, the attempts at decryption are what fuels the encryption to get better and better.

  • 2 weeks later...
Posted

I think it may be because governments and corporations are now getting into quantum computers, which renders encryption useless. Anyone who has one of these computers can now print all the bitcoins they want, thereby giving these institutions the power to regulate bitcoin at will. Shit, they don't even know if these things actually work, and Google bought 5 of them at a million dollars a piece. 

Actually this is invalid, as anyone who has that much computing power would be wasting their money to crack the bitcoin network. There are much more profitable uses of such a computer. This is like a thief buying a WARTHOG gatling gun to hold up a continence store.. Yeah you got the cash register but you're out $20,000. On a much bigger scale. Even using your computing power to MINE bitcoins would make you far more profit, while retaining the sanctity of the network. 

 

Now as for governments with unlimited money that don't adhere to the market.. were fucked. 

×
×
  • Create New...

Important Information

By using this site, you agree to our Terms of Use.