> I'm assuming that given a starting point A and a number of operations n, there's a much faster way of computing the end point than just iterating n times?

Yes, this is in fact the basis of the cryptographic security. There's a way to iterate the generator whatever number of times, fast. This is called multiplication, just like there's a way to multiply arithmetic numbers in school without adding over and over.

The thing is it isn't quite so easy given the starting point and the result what you multiplied by.