Ethereum co-founder Vitalik Buterin has sent a harsh warning about the dangers posed by quantum computing to the crypto economy.

"Seemingly," there is a 20% chance of quantum computers breaking modern cryptography before the end of 2030, Buterin warned. He made the observation during an online exchange with Ian Miers, Assistant Professor of Computer Science at the University of Maryland, on X on Aug. 27.

Quantum computing and crypto

Cryptocurrencies are digital currencies that deploy cryptographic functions to encrypt all the financial details to ensure the integrity and security of funds. This way, nobody other than the individuals sending and receiving crypto assets can gain access to any sensitive financial data.

Related: What is Crypto? Cryptocurrency explained

It is estimated that even the latest, most powerful supercomputers will take thousands of years to decrypt crypto proofs. But there is a deep-seated fear within the crypto community that quantum computers will be able to violate crypto security within seconds.

While the computers we work on use binary electrical signals to represent ones or zeros, quantum computers employ quantum bits (qubits), which are subatomic particles.

When optimized, qubits can simultaneously represent combinations of both ones and zeros. The more qubits, the greater the potential for large-scale compute power for problem-solving.

The Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) mathematician Peter Shor developed the first well-known quantum algorithm for breaking encryption in the 1990s.
When quantum computing truly arrives on its own, there is a fear of it seriously disrupting the cryptocurrency infrastructure.

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Quantum computers could break cryptography by 2030, Buterin warns

Miers opined that STARK or hash-based cryptographic proof implementations aren't usually zero-knowledge.

Buterin agreed with Miers about the cost of complexity.

In addition, most current use cases of cryptography don't require privacy, he added.
But the threat of quantum computing will require developers to pivot to STARK proofs for privacy reasons, he warned, and added that STARK anyway has a lot of advantages.