“There is absolutely no indication that decades-old assumptions about the robustness of elliptic curve cryptography have been compromised,” stated Yehuda Lindell, the head of cryptography at Coinbase.
Lindell’s comments were in response to a viral tweet by Justin Drake, who claimed that advances in AI pose a significant risk to the cryptographic foundations of major cryptocurrencies like Bitcoin and Ethereum, potentially allowing them to be compromised well before quantum computers become mainstream. He urged the blockchain community to prepare for potential threats and advised crypto holders to transfer their assets to new addresses not linked to previous transactions.
“Initially, I hesitated to respond because I think this perspective is misguided, but given its popularity, I feel compelled to weigh in,” Lindell remarked.
“Claiming that AI’s advancements in mathematics threaten elliptic curve hardness lacks any rational support,” he elaborated. “Moreover, if such a breach were possible, the consequences for our digital ecosystem, including the conventional financial sector, would be staggering. If I could break ECC, I could easily forge public key infrastructure certificates, impersonate banking websites, and even create malicious banking applications and operating systems that could be signed and distributed, compromising users’ phones and computers entirely.”
“However, this kind of rhetoric is purely fear-based since no evidence supports such capabilities. Making assertions without any backing is the antithesis of responsible discourse. It epitomizes fear, uncertainty, and doubt (FUD)—impossible to disprove but lacking any substantiating evidence to support its validity.”