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>> the Satoshi hoard of coins which haven't moved (ever)

What type of math problem has to be cracked to claim that stash?

Basically you have to crack hard crypto. With key lengths long enough and no mathematical weaknesses discovered in the algorithm it could easily take until the heat death of the universe.

Can't quantum computers theoretically break elliptic curve cryptography? I suspect we'll get there a bit before the heat death of the universe.

Bitcoin is actually somewhat hardened to quantum computers. Quantum computers can break ECC but are much less effective against hash functions. You can't attack the public key offline because it's not usually part of the blockchain, only the fingerprint is.

The famous ECDLP or Elliptic Curve Discrete Log Problem, upon which a large part of Bitcoin's security rests.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Elliptic-curve_cryptography#Ra...

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