So you may or may not be aware that The Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) is set to make a big reveal on August 1st regarding a new Litecoin technology. You can see the announcement page here.
After a lot of pondering and putting pieces together, I think I know what the announcement is going to be... Of course i do not definitively know, but nonetheless I think this is a decent educated guess...
So, here it is. Here is what I think. Mark this post!
On August 1st, 2017, MIT may announce that they have developed an enhancement to the Litecoin (LTC) encryption algorithm that will make it demonstrably resistant to Quantum Computing! - Kalienx777, 17-06-26
This is going to be absolutely huge if true. To date, the only real technological threat to destroying Bitcoin, Litecoin, Ethereum, and other cryptocurrencies is quantum computing.
This is because the encryption algorithms these cryptos use ( and what most of the world uses for so many other things) relies on hashing a public key from a private key with up to 256 bits, or 2^128 possible combinations. This means a traditional computer would have to do this many operations sequentially in order to brute force (or guess right by trial and error) the right private key. From a time perspective, even with the fastest traditional computers it would take hundreds of thousands of years to complete. From an energy perspective, it would take the kilojoules of energy of thousands of our suns to accomplish. In other words, using a traditional modern computer means that these cryptocurrency private keys are pretty safe.
With quantum computing, however, the computer utilizes resources from an infinite number of quantum states (almost like parallel universes) to guess all the possible combinations at once. Instead of guessing a 1 or a 0 for a bit, it can guess a 1 AND a 0 at the same time. Each one of these guesses comprises a bit, but in quantum computers, they are called qubits. In May, IBM announced they had developed the first 17 qubit quantum computer. That means a 17 bit encryption could theoretically solved instantly. The previous quantum computer processor capacity record was 4 qubits. So, you can see progress is rapidly being made to increase the number of qubits of these processors. It's only a matter of time before quantum computers become powerful enough to solve cryptocurrency encryption and therefore destroy cryptocurrencies.
So back to MIT. Why do I think their announcement will be a solution to resist quantum computing? Well, a few points:
1. We already know MIT currently HAS a quantum computer are actively working on using it to break encryption. See an article about it here.
2. There have already been some cryptocurrencies such as Iota and Quantum Resistant Ledger that have claimed they are quantum computing resistant. So we know this is an area people in the cryptocurrency space are working on. These are however just claims and we have yet to see it work.
3. On the announcement page, it says "Technology Released Aug 1st, 2017." This is in past tense. Perhaps this is a play on quantum temporal dynamics where past and future become indistinguishable?
Of course I could be totally wrong about this, but I'm making a prediction today that on Aug 1, 2017 that MIT is about to announce a true, demonstrable, quantum resistant technology to deploy onto Litecoin. This will change the face of cryptocurrencies forever and light the path toward cryptocurrencies becoming the world reserve standard for generations to come.
So what am I going to do based on this prediction? Well, I'm going to buy some Litecoin!!!