Oh, dear lord.
> ultimately not as advanced as its younger brethren.
These must then be simply out of this world. Superwonder technologies. Double digit transactions per second!! /$
The hype around this piece of software is getting out of hand.
Said by a guy you just witness the historical invention of the wheel.
About the wheel. Rolling friction is less than sliding friction... Regrettably that point is probably over your head.
+1 for your ad hom.
The wheel was, in fact, one of the first instances of a centralized structure replacing an inefficieint distributed structure.
The central "hub" of a wheel bears the load and the "edge condition" is the substantially reduced "rolling friction".
This is in contrast to ye old "distributed load" way of a zillion poor slaves pulling a load.
So as far as the "wheel" goes, VISA is a chariot, and Bitcoin is an army of slaves pulling a wheel-less load.
And in fact, the "facts", prove this. Almost 400 KWh per transaction, and that at the feeble rate of 7 tx/sec.
That is your "technological wonder".
point 2:
"Technological wonder[s]" of this time -- now -- are Machine Learning, CRISPR, etc. These are the "inventions" to pay attention to, not a thinly disguised play by private wealth to finally fully take out the national governments from the monetary system loop.
That CJW -- Crypto Justice Warriors -- like you fail to see this is the actual "wonder".
Or do you mean the revolutionary scamming techniques never seen before? /s
Before bitcoin you would be unable to create a virtual currency without a central authority. Satoshi's algorithm was a new invention in 2009, although it's parts - like proof of Work - were invented in 1990s.
Until that happens, there's still money to be made!
Not all ciphers... 3DES and GOST have no practical breaks after 40 years of cryptanalysis (all attacks have > 2^100 time or memory complexity)
Any secure modern 256 bit symmetric primitive is likely safe from large quantum computers.
What will continue to be be broken are encryption protocols and systems that misuse modern secure 256-bit primitives. So we will continue to see things like the BEAST attack because non-cryptographers continue to invent their own encryption protocols with alarming frequency.