Chapter 19
(This episode's a little tough…)
Meanwhile.
When Yu A-yeon published the paper proving the Riemann Hypothesis.
Headlines saying the Riemann Hypothesis might really be solved began pouring out one after another.
As a result, all coins, including Bitcoin, crashed hard.
There was no clear reason.
Very few people could explain the exact causal relationship between the Riemann Hypothesis and Bitcoin.
However, most investors didn't know much about mathematics or modern cryptography.
All it took was the investors' fear for sell orders to overwhelm buy orders.
The response from Coin Gallery was intense.
[What the fuck is going on]
[Run———!!!]
[LOL, you long degenerates have been having fun all this time, huh?]
[Han———River———]
[Go short, go go]
[Fuck, so we're all just gonna die?]
[The———Great———Depression———]
[Title : What the hell happened when I turned on Downbit]
(a meme image of a coin chart plummeting straight down)
(a selfie of a man with tears streaming down his face)
It was fine before I went to bed, so what the hell happened...
- T_TTTTTT
- Life just doesn't go the way you want it to. It sucks, seriously.
[Title : I was so pissed I smashed the sink, damn it]
(Photo.jpg of a broken sink and a fist bleeding profusely)
Why can't I make money?
- You can tell he's ugly just from the hands lol
- Doraemon hands, you gay bastard lol
[Title : I don't know who Yu A-yeon is, but if you want to tear her to shreds, upvote lolㅋㅋㅋㅋㅋㅋ]
The Riemann Hypothesis, national-pride crap, whatever—I don't care, damn it, save my coin—!!!!!!!!
- Upvote lolㅋㅋㅋㅋㅋ
- They say it's a paper that hasn't even been verified, so why the hell is it tanking?
- If it’s tanking, it’s tanking. Does the reason even matter?
- When has it ever gone up because of a reason?
[Title : So you're saying the reason it's dropping right now is because of one math problem?]
What the hell, it's not like the U.S. Fed fired an interest-rate beam or anything, so is it really right for Bitcoin to be going nuts over just one math problem?
Am I living in a simulation or something?
I don't get it...
- If the Riemann Hypothesis is solved, all modern crypto gets cracked, idiot lol. The problem isn't coins; pull your money out of the bank first.
- So you're saying it's crashing because of people like that?
- If you don't know anything, shut up.
- Ugh... where do I even start explaining...
✒️✒️✒️
Later that evening, Dad called me over.
“A-yeon. I need to ask you something.”
“What is it, Dad?”
Pitter-patter-.
I walked over to Dad.
“What does the Riemann Hypothesis have to do with cryptocurrency?”
That was a pretty out-of-the-blue question.
“Uh... what are you suddenly talking about?”
“This is the current Bitcoin chart. Want to take a look?”
Dad turned on his smartphone and showed me a chart.
The coin graph had been climbing smoothly, then starting exactly on the day I uploaded my proof paper for the Riemann Hypothesis to the archive, it suddenly plunged.
But after a few days, it seemed to rebound.
I tilted my head.
“What is this? Don't tell me it's because of me?”
“That's right. The prevailing view is that it crashed because of the news that the Riemann Hypothesis had been proven.”
“But... even if the Riemann Hypothesis were solved, it would have almost no direct effect on Bitcoin security...”
“Don't worry about it too much. Investors will sell off even if there's just a little news about quantum computer technology. In other words, most of them sold because they didn't really know. Honestly, I don't know the details myself either.”
“Is that how it is?”
“Yeah. So I want to know the details. A-yeon, remember back then? When you were Shin I-jun. At the last drinking party before you died, you said it was a conspiracy theory that solving the Riemann Hypothesis would break Bitcoin's security, right?”
“Did my past self really say that? My memory's a blur... total blur.”
I pressed my index finger to my temple and tried to remember, but it was vague.
That was because some of my past-life memories had become blurry due to reincarnation.
“That was true. But back then I wasn't that interested, so I let it go... I want to know now, even if it's belated. What exactly is the mechanism?”
“Sounds good! I'll give Dad a special cryptography lecture!”
I puffed out my chest and thumped it with my fists.
Then I dragged Mom, who was washing dishes in the kitchen, over too.
“Um... why Mom?”
Mom came over while still wearing rubber gloves.
“Mom has to listen too! Mom majored in math, after all!”
“R-really?”
“Big sis! Can I listen too?”
“You can listen, but it's a little hard for Arin!”
“I still wanna listen!”
The family began gathering in a little huddle in front of me.
And just like that, Yu A-yeon's special lecture for her family audience began.
“The lecture topic is... the Riemann Hypothesis, primes, modern cryptography, and Bitcoin!”
I stood in front of the whiteboard in the living room, decorated with a design of cute animal friends.
“Heave-ho-.”
Then I stepped up on the footstool to match my height.
Pop-.
I popped off the board-marker cap and began writing carefully.
Everyone's eyes were fixed on the whiteboard.
[If the Riemann Hypothesis is solved, Bitcoin becomes dangerous — True?]
“Starting with the conclusion: nope! It's a conspiracy theory!”
I drew a big red X with a red marker.
Swish-.
Dad raised his hand.
“Then why did it crash?”
“I'll get to that later. I'll explain it step by step.”
First, the Riemann Hypothesis.
“To explain it specifically, you won't understand, so to put it loosely, the Riemann Hypothesis deals with the distribution of prime numbers. It's about how primes are spread out. You know what prime numbers are, right?”
Nod-nod-
Dad nodded.
Mom nodded too.
Arin blanked out for a moment, then nodded along.
“Arin doesn't need to know.”
“I know. Numbers that are divisible only by 1 and themselves.”
“...How does Arin know that?”
“Big sis taught me once before.”
“Ah... right. That's right, she did, didn't she. Arin, you've got a good memory, huh?”
“Hehe!”
“Anyway, prime numbers go 2, 3, 5, 7, 11, 13... and so on, but later on they appear irregularly. When you get to really, really huge numbers, there are cases where the gap between one prime and the next is over a billion. In fact, many mathematicians think there really is no clear rule at all.”
I wrote on the whiteboard.
[Riemann Hypothesis → Predicting the distribution of prime numbers]
“Now, on to modern cryptography. Most public-key cryptography runs on primes. RSA and the Diffie-Hellman key exchange are the big examples. Banking apps we know probably use this too, right? Public-key cryptography is basically the encryption needed when sending data over the internet.”
[Public-key cryptography → encryption used when sending data over the internet → uses primes]
“Why use primes in cryptography? That's something you learn in number theory, but anyway, primes are way more structurally complex than ordinary numbers, so computations with them are insanely hard!”
[Public-key cryptography → encryption used when sending data over the internet → uses primes → Why? → Because it's insanely hard to calculate with]
“But for encryption not to be broken, it's important to choose large primes... and it's important to keep them hidden.”
Modern cryptography’s standard, RSA, hides enormous prime numbers (about 300 digits long) inside computer servers, tightly locked away. That is the secret key.
If that number leaks, it's basically the same as saying, “Please hack my server, hacker-sir~ teehee~.”
What if a bank's secret key leaked?
“Oh my gosh! The money entrusted to the bank would vanish into thin air that very day.”
It'd just go pffft and turn into a worthless scrap of paper.
“Now, here's what people are worried about.”
“Okay. Let's say we can't find the primes hidden away on the server, so the encryption can't be broken. But if the Riemann Hypothesis is solved, wouldn't we be able to find primes quickly? Then wouldn't all crypto be broken?”
“...Ah.”
By that point, Dad nodded as if he understood what I was talking about.
“People worry about it in that context. But actually, no... the Riemann Hypothesis doesn't predict primes exactly; it predicts where primes are on average. So it has nothing to do with finding the prime hidden in a bank server!”
[Riemann Hypothesis → Predicting the distribution of prime numbers → Not an exact prediction of primes → Therefore, crypto won't be broken!]
“To use an analogy, imagine there are tons and tons of fish in the ocean. But one of those fish swallowed a ring. And we have to find it by pulling them out one by one with a fishing hook. There's no way we'd find it, right?”
“Oh! Fishies-! I get it! That's super hard!”
Arin grinned brightly at the analogy.
“The difficulty of breaking the cryptography we actually use is about that level. And the Riemann Hypothesis is like a sonar detector that goes beep-beep-beep when fish are nearby. Of course, it still can't tell you which fish has the ring!”
“That... definitely wouldn't have much of an effect then...”
“Exactly! People mistake the Riemann Hypothesis for some kind of aimbot that finds the ring-swallowing fish, but in reality it's a tool that's way, way weaker than that! It just tells you whether a fish is there!”
Of course, even a detector that just beeps when you're nearby is mathematically hugely valuable. That's why there's a one-million-dollar bounty on it.
“Anyway, modern cryptography doesn't get broken by something like this!”
Bang bang!
I stomped the footstool with my foot to make a sound.
“Now, on to Bitcoin. The cryptographic technology Bitcoin uses has two major parts.”
[SHA-256 / ECDSA(elliptic curve cryptography)]
“You don't need the specifics. Just think of these two as the alpha and omega of Bitcoin security.”
Dad nodded.
Mom nodded too.
Arin was already in a woozy, dazed state.
[SHA-256 → based on bit operations]
“First, the one in front isn't prime-based cryptography. You know this too, Dad, right? It's all just bitwise operations mixed around with AND, XOR, and NOT. It has nothing to do with primes.”
[ECDSA → yes, it does use primes → but the calculations are insanely hard]
“And the one in back is one of those modern cryptosystems I mentioned earlier, and yes, it does use primes, but it's also insanely hard. If you brute-forced it with a computer, it would probably take hundreds of years.”
The Riemann Hypothesis only helps predict the distribution of primes better; it doesn't give you a faster way to solve long-running problems.
Ultimately, security only becomes at risk if the premise that computations take a long time is broken, and my paper doesn't break that premise.
Therefore, Bitcoin, which is based on modern cryptography, isn't going to be in danger either!
“So why did Bitcoin crash, then...
“Probably because of reasoning like this.”
[Riemann Hypothesis solved → prime secrets exposed → modern cryptography is based on primes? → then aren't cryptocurrencies all going to be hacked? → Run away!!!]
“People who don't know better, or conspiracy theorists, sometimes think like this. You thought so too, didn't you, Dad?”
Dad nodded in agreement.
“Right. I saw it in a documentary too, and I think they said something about crypto becoming dangerous if the Riemann Hypothesis were solved.”
“Ugh... this is why broadcasters who make documentaries with non-specialists are... well, not exactly harmless.”
“Really?”
Mom asked.
“Yep. There could theoretically be some effect on generating primes or analyzing prime randomness. My paper might influence things later and lead to the development of a new algorithm. I don't know yet either. But if you ask whether that threatens modern cryptography... realistically, that's just people making a fuss.”
In the end, it's just overhype piled on top of overhype.
The coin chart returning to normal after just a few days is proof of that.
“At the very least, if modern cryptographic systems were to be threatened, P vs. NP would have to be proven true... then that would be a real Great Depression.”
P vs. NP is one of the seven major math problems, on the same level as the Riemann Hypothesis.
“What happens if that turns out to be true?”
“To use the fish analogy again, think of it as an aimbot that finds the ring-swallowing fish.”
“Like a giant magnet going, 'Ring-swallowing fish, come here!'”
As a result, the cryptosystems would come crashing down, and we'd have to go back to a civilization before 1970, before the internet. Brrr. Scary.
“Anyway, that's it for the explanation! That concludes Yu A-yeon's special lecture!”
“Oooh-.”
Clap clap clap clap clap-.
Dad applauded.
Clack clack clack-.
Mom applauded with her rubber-gloved hands.
Maybe because they were rubber, they stuck together with a sticky smack.
Arin clapped along too.
“Arin, did you understand?”
“I understood just a little bit!”
“Hehe. You'll understand once some time passes!”
Pop-.
I put the cap back on the board marker.