[ExI] You'd better sell your bitcoins

[John Clark]

On Sun, Nov 16, 2025 at 9:07 AM Adrian Tymes via extropy-chat <
extropy-chat at lists.extropy.org> wrote:

*> Even if all of this is true, wait until that computer actually comes
> out.  This isn't Roko's Basilisk; this computer can't affect things before
> it exists. *


*Actually it can. There will come a time when quantum computers have made a
lot of progress very rapidly but they're still not big enough to run Shor’s
algorithm; however, an increasingly large number of people realize that
they soon will be, and then there's going to be a wave of panic selling.
Sure you could theoretically make a lot of money if you waited to sell your
bitcoin's until the day before the onset of the panic, but your timing
would need to be perfect. You'd be playing Russian roulette with your
money.*

*John K Clark*







> On Sun, Nov 16, 2025 at 8:14 AM John Clark via extropy-chat
> <extropy-chat at lists.extropy.org> wrote:
> >
> > Quantum computer expert Scott Aaronson has always been a vocal critic of
> the excessive hype surrounding his subject, but just a few days ago he
> wrote this:
> >
> > "I now think it’s a live possibility that we’ll have a fault-tolerant
> quantum computer running Shor’s algorithm before the next US presidential
> election. And I say that not only because of the possibility of the next US
> presidential election getting cancelled, or preempted by runaway
> superintelligence!"
> >
> > When we have a quantum computer big enough to run Shor's algorithm,
> bitcoin becomes worthless. Aaronson then says this:
> >
> > "The two biggest known application areas for QC remain (a) quantum
> simulation and (b) the breaking of public-key cryptography, just as they
> were thirty years ago."
> >
> > Quantum Computing, too much to handle
> >
> > John K Clark
> >
> >
>
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