It's a big thing nowadays. The advent of practical quantum computing technology is not quite here yet, but give it say, another decade and we will be seeing huge advancements.

Disagree? Well, it is a humble prediction of some guy on the internet.

Indulge me; what if I am right?

One of the largest threats to our everyday lives with the advent of quantum computing is security. How well will those traditional encryptions and security measures stand up to a computer that can make a traditional supercomputer look like an abacus? Clearly, it won't take much. Fortunately for us, people are already thinking about this. Once it becomes a threat, we will know how to quash it. Think Y2K expectations versus its reality. The biggest thing that happened on January 1st 2000 was a hangover. Okay maybe a murder and some isolated glitches or something, but I digress.

The message here is that for most stuff, things will be okay I think. Not only this, but accessibility to QC will be pretty limited, as the trend will likely continue to be one of big centralized locations like Google and IBM that have the quantum power. In fact, I think the first consumer applications of quantum computers will be cloud computing. Wanna run an algorithm or some quantum program? Send it on in, and our big ass computers will run your stuff.

So... How about Bitcoin? Clearly, the encryption will be torn through like hot butter. Clearly, things will have to change, and those changes will have to be systemic in order to maintain security. It would kinda suck if someone could mine some coins in no time by leveraging a QC. That's bad.

There's a lot of naysayers and FOD out there regarding quantum computing and crypto, and honestly, a lot of it is far out of my wheelhouse. What I do know is that people find solutions to problems, especially if the stakes are high.

Hell, Bitcoin as we know it might end up dead if it cannot change, and some future fork is the one that takes dominance because it is able to seamlessly integrate Post Quantum Encryption into it. There might be a company or another Satoshi out there working on this right now, and is waiting for the right time... Crypto is mysterious, and it surprises all the time.

For the reader, don't fret. Remember to only invest what you can afford to lose, keep in mind that regardless of tech, this is a risk, and be adaptive to change. Crypto is huge, and it won't be going anywhere soon.