<blockquote>
<p>How resistant is bitcoin blockchain against physical attacks? Contrary to other consensus mechanisms, Bitcoin's PoW model is dependent on massive Mining Farms with tons of ASIIC hardware. These farms are known to everyone, especially the government of respective country.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>Bitcoin's protocol is designed to adjust to increases and decreases in network hash rate. There is a difficulty adjustment for this purpose. If a number of mining farms all went offline in an instant it would result in higher confirmation times until the difficulty adjustment kicked in two weeks later. Although disruptive in the short term it would have no greater impact than that.</p>
<blockquote>
<p>The bitcoin network is not using signatures or encryption methods that are especially suited against quantum computer attacks. Especially Bitcoin's ECDSA and the PoW mining process would become easily vulnerable with quantum computers.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>The Bitcoin protocol is using elliptic curve cryptography as are all internet security protocols and banking security applications. As Pieter Wuille states <a href="https://bitcoin.stackexchange.com/questions/57965/are-schnorr-signatures-quantum-computer-resistant">here</a>:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>Quantum resistant signature algorithms do exist, but they all rely on very large signatures - which may make them unfeasibly expensive for purposes like Bitcoin.</p>
</blockquote>

CC BY-SA 4.0
2020-09-27T17:37:36.883Z
2020-09-27T17:37:36.883Z
Michael Folkson
<ol>
<li>How resistant is bitcoin blockchain against physical attacks? Contrary to other consensus mechanisms, Bitcoin's PoW model is dependent on massive Mining Farms with tons of ASIIC hardware. These farms are known to everyone, especially the government of respective country.</li>
</ol>
<p>Every mining farm in every country, could be sized as one example of a possible future.</p>
<p>What does the bitcoin blockchain do to mitigate such attack of government seizure of all mining farms in one country?</p>
<ol start="2">
<li>The bitcoin network is not using signatures or encryption methods that are especially suited against quantum computer attacks. Especially Bitcoin's ECDSA and the PoW mining process would become easily vulnerable with quantum computers.</li>
</ol>
<p>Many bitcoin developers here have the opinion that there is still many years time, let us wait and see what methods the NIST will be selecting.</p>
<p>But this is very naive thinking. Even when nobody knows it for sure, History has always proven to be like this: Very major technology breakthroughs were known way in advance before they hit the public.</p>
<p>When you stick to waiting philosophy, it will be too late to act when NIST picks a cipher.  Something should be done before that,  adding a new signature type to Bitcoin can be done with a soft fork easily for example.</p>
<p>What is the status of Core Developers regarding this topic?</p>

<bitcoin-core-development><attack><majority-attack><schnorr-signatures><quantum-computing>
Two threats to Bitcoin: Quantum Computing and Mining farm seizures - what new BIPs are needed before it is too late?
Marieanndrasuper
# Two threats to Bitcoin: Quantum Computing and Mining farm seizures - what new BIPs are needed before it is too late?

(Asked by: username_0 on 2020-09-27)

1. How resistant is bitcoin blockchain against physical attacks? Contrary to other consensus mechanisms, Bitcoin's PoW model is dependent on massive Mining Farms with tons of ASIIC hardware. These farms are known to everyone, especially the government of respective country.

Every mining farm in every country, could be sized as one example of a possible future.

What does the bitcoin blockchain do to mitigate such attack of government seizure of all mining farms in one country?

2. The bitcoin network is not using signatures or encryption methods that are especially suited against quantum computer attacks. Especially Bitcoin's ECDSA and the PoW mining process would become easily vulnerable with quantum computers.

Many bitcoin developers here have the opinion that there is still many years time, let us wait and see what methods the NIST will be selecting.

But this is very naive thinking. Even when nobody knows it for sure, History has always proven to be like this: Very major technology breakthroughs were known way in advance before they hit the public.

When you stick to waiting philosophy, it will be too late to act when NIST picks a cipher. Something should be done before that, adding a new signature type to Bitcoin can be done with a soft fork easily for example.

What is the status of Core Developers regarding this topic?

**Tags:** bitcoin-core-development, attack, majority-attack, schnorr-signatures, quantum-computing


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## 1 answers

### Answer by username_1 on 2020-09-27. Score: 2

> How resistant is bitcoin blockchain against physical attacks? Contrary to other consensus mechanisms, Bitcoin's PoW model is dependent on massive Mining Farms with tons of ASIIC hardware. These farms are known to everyone, especially the government of respective country.

Bitcoin's protocol is designed to adjust to increases and decreases in network hash rate. There is a difficulty adjustment for this purpose. If a number of mining farms all went offline in an instant it would result in higher confirmation times until the difficulty adjustment kicked in two weeks later. Although disruptive in the short term it would have no greater impact than that.

> The bitcoin network is not using signatures or encryption methods that are especially suited against quantum computer attacks. Especially Bitcoin's ECDSA and the PoW mining process would become easily vulnerable with quantum computers.

The Bitcoin protocol is using elliptic curve cryptography as are all internet security protocols and banking security applications. As Pieter Wuille states [here](https://bitcoin.stackexchange.com/questions/57965/are-schnorr-signatures-quantum-computer-resistant):

> Quantum resistant signature algorithms do exist, but they all rely on very large signatures - which may make them unfeasibly expensive for purposes like Bitcoin.


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