Basher Tarr’s Law states the higher the tech the quicker the clever the con – which means smart villains must already be working on bitcoin burglary (sorry). A team of scholars* from Singapore and Sydney say that even with quantum computers blockchain thievery will not be easy with one big exception – a criminal cracking the secret key that identifies a transaction and using it before an exchange is placed on the blockchain can loot accounts. The first graduate course on blockchain security cannot be far away.

# Divesh Aggarwal, National University of Singapore, Gavin Brennen, Macquarie U,  Troy Lee, Nanyang Technological University, Singapore, Miklos Santha, Universit´e Paris Diderot and NUS,  Marco Tomamichel, UTS, “Quantum attacks on Bitcoin and how to protect against them,” is here