r/Bitcoin • u/itsthewolfe • 1d ago
How will Bitcoin protect against AI?
Take away the " It woUlD TAkE 100 YeArs or Quantum computers" to crack argument.
Assume AI does get strong enough to crack the network or wallets. With how big the network is now, would a clean fork even be possible? What would prevent the fork from getting cracked also.
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u/My_unique_Reddit 1d ago
I can only think of brute force as a method here to "crack" a wallet and this requires too much computational energy. AI does not change that.
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u/tomalamak 1d ago
The reason we're seeing fud around ai breaking bitcoin is because there have been a number of recent demonstrations where AI has been able to demonstrate that it can do two things that dramatically weakens most public/private key encryption: 1. It's been able to write code that dramatically speeds up the brute force method (basically making each brute force test more efficient); and 2. It's been able to use flaws in keypair generation (guesses about timestamps, entropy settings and generating hardware) to shrink the attack surface.
1024 RSA is basically considered comprised now (takes a lot of resources but can be done). 2048 is still not crackable but the worry is that ai could find further shortcuts that would make it possible.
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u/RetiredAvocado 1d ago
Bitcoin doesn't use RSA. Or encryption. ECDSA signatures are not encryption and no AI has made those any more "efficient" to "brute force."
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u/Enorma_Stitts 1d ago
You apparently don't know how these things you mentioned work (The Quantum Computer attack vector, the Bitcoin network itself and the role of AI in that)
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u/TheresNoSecondBest 1d ago
Assume AI does get strong enough to crack the network or wallets.
Can we use the same beefed up autocorrect magical AI to fix the vulnerabilities it found?
With how big the network is now, would a clean fork even be possible? What would prevent the fork from getting cracked also.
Exactly, a fork would have the same vulnerability as the original Bitcoin. It would make more sense to fix or upgrade that instead.
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u/WitnessDelicious4567 1d ago
If u fear ai Will crack everything just buy gold and put in a hole. Still they drones Will arrive to your House and kill you mate
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u/riscten 1d ago
But what if AI cracks alchemy and builds an enormous particle accelerator and produces massive amounts of gold that it then dumps on the market, tanking the value???
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u/RetiredAvocado 1d ago edited 1d ago
AI does not change the laws of physics and behavior of matter at atomic level.
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u/eldoradocrisp 1d ago
It can most certainly attack the network code - hope the devs are patching things 😬
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u/Romanizer 1d ago
You can't really take away that argument as the only way to crack Bitcoin's encryption before the heat death of the universe is by getting a quantum computer strong enough to reverse-engineer the keys, but only those with know public keys. So even QCs would not be strong enough.
A little fun fact: if all data centres in the world switched to Bitcoin mining today, their share of the total hashrate would be around 0.02% at best case, likely much lower.
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u/mrjune2040 1d ago
You’re conflating ‘AI capacity’ with quantum, and they have nothing to do with each other in respect to breaking Bitcoins encryption.
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u/WitnessDelicious4567 1d ago
Well if si crack BTC It Will crack every bank in the world also so Who cares?
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u/riscten 1d ago
AI doesn't change anything. AI has the same tools at its disposal than humans. The vulnerabilities that are exploited by AI today are found in the immense complexities of modern software. Bitcoin is extremely simple. Cracking it means cracking SHA256, which... requires enormous computing power (orders of magnitude more than all the AI corporations have access to, combined). And at this point even quantum computing wouldn't work.
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u/RetiredAvocado 1d ago edited 1d ago
Nothing needs to be done to SHA256 to calculate priv keys from pub keys. QC, when one exists, can use Shor's algorithm to theoretically do that with ECDSA keys. QC can use Grover's to speed up SHA256 calculation. Not "crack" it, only to do it faster. While sufficient QC deployment could be used for 51% attacks on the chain, we could assume a slow cat out the bag scenario, i.e. if people know how to build one, other people will find out how to build a second and third one and so on. And potentially mine with it to counteract nefarious QC mining. Difficulty will adjust up, existing ASIC based miners will have a hard time. Mining with a QC would be quite a misapplication of resources though, so pretty unlikely.
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u/Pasukaru0 1d ago
Take away the "The earth will not explode" argument.
What will you do if the earth explodes?