How can a Blockchain be safe despite the short key length?

Blockchain, the distributed ledger technology underlying bitcoin, may prove to be far more valuable than the currency it supports. read more

While blockchain transactions can be used to store data, the primary motivation for bitcoin transactions is the exchange of bitcoin itself; the currency’s exchange rate has fluctuated over its short lifetime but has increased in value more than fivefold over the past two years. read more

Public key cryptography - A cryptographic mechanism by which a "private" secret key can be converted into a "public" key and used to prove ownership of the private key without giving away the secret. Additionally it is possible to encrypt data using the public key so that only the person holding the private key can decrypt it. read more

The most common way to send bitcoins is to an address, which is a hash of a Bitcoin public key. The reason we do it that way is so that if there is a vulnerability in elliptic curves, your money can still be safe, since the public key isn't even known until you spend the money, only the hash is known. read more