A few weeks ago, China’s President Xi Jinping announced that the nation would focus on blockchain technology as the main driver of innovation. Chinese firms immediately seized the opportunity with the leaders of major firms all over China announcing blockchain ventures. Local governments in China also unveiled funds for innovators in the blockchain space. Media organizations in the nation have also been shilling the technology since then.
Not everyone is Bullish
While it seems like everyone is on board with the technology, the CEO of Huawei, one of the biggest tech firms in China, is skeptical of the technology. According to a video shared on Chinese social media, the CEO of Huawei believes that the technology is vulnerable due to quantum computing.
Recent Quantum Computing Advances
The latest developments in Quantum computing first appeared on NASA’s official website. It indicated that Google had achieved Quantum supremacy, which means its systems had achieved something that a supercomputer could not achieve. Later on, Google confirmed the news. Google claims that one of its devices had conducted a computation task that a normal supercomputer could not achieve within a practical timeline. VF recently reported on Quantum Computing and how it was “causing jitters in the blockchain industry”.
This development has left many wondering whether blockchains are safe. After all, most blockchains are just complex mathematical equations that can be broken with enough resources and effort. Ren Zhengfei, who is the CEO of Huawei, believes that quantum computing could destroy blockchains and cryptocurrencies.
In the video appearing on Chinese social media, he said that blockchains would not have a future due to the power of quantum devices. He even said the technology was essentially worthless. The clip was just 39 seconds and there might have been more to it. However, the fact that the chief executive of one of the largest tech firms does not believe in blockchain is significant. This is especially so since China has decided to make the technology a core part of its innovativeness.
Is Quantum Computing a Threat to Blockchains
Despite the hype surrounding Google’s latest breakthrough, many experts in the blockchain space do not believe that the technology is a threat to the blockchain. Many experts believe that public-private key encryption model used by most cryptocurrencies cannot be broken by the technology.
In a recent YouTube video, Andreas Antonopoulos, a technologist, has echoed this sentiment. He said that the latest quantum computing developments would have no effect on cryptocurrency. Antonopoulos added that the achievement by Google had no effect on cryptography, especially the one used by modern blockchains.
Besides that, he noted that blockchain developers still had options to introduce measures that would make their blockchains quantum resistant. He also noted that such technology would not likely be targeted at blockchains. If someone had the technology, he or she would likely use it for intelligence purposes. Besides that, they could target something major such as nuclear codes, if they were a bad actor.
Another player in the blockchain sector, Vitalik Buterin, has said he does not believe quantum computers will have an effect on cryptography. He added that for quantum computing to become practical, it would take about a decade.
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