A study by the University of Kent's School of Computer Science shows that if Bitcoin wants to effectively protect against the threat posed by quantum computing, a protocol update is required, which will cause the cryptocurrency to be offline for 76 days. Alternatively, Bitcoin can use 25% of its servers for protocol updates while allowing users to continue mining and trading at a slower rate. But in that case, the downtime will be as long as 305 days. According to the Ponemon Institute, the cost of one hour of downtime for a business can be as high as $500,000. If Bitcoin is down for 76 days (which is the best case scenario considered by the study), the cost of the update could reach $912 million. Experts point out that this slow and expensive action is necessary given that emerging and "upcoming" quantum technology may easily crack the encryption code that protects large amounts of online data. (Fortune)