Key Notes
- Google researcher reveals quantum computers could break Bitcoin encryption sooner than expected.
- Bitcoin’s elliptic curve cryptography (ECC) is vulnerable to quantum attacks like Shor’s algorithm.
- Current quantum hardware isn’t powerful enough yet but progress is rapidly accelerating.
Craig Gidney, a Quantum AI researcher at Google, warned that Bitcoin’s encryption faces growing risks due to rapid advancements in quantum computing. He further revealed that breaking RSA encryption now requires 20 times fewer quantum resources than was previously estimated.
Although the finding did not specifically mention Bitcoin, it focused on the RSA encryption methods that form the core security framework for many crypto wallets and, in some cases, protect transactions as well.
How Dangerous Is Quantum Computing for the Bitcoin Algorithm?
RSA is a public-key algorithm for the encryption and decryption of data. Bitcoin BTC $96 611 24h volatility: 2.1% Market cap: $1.92 T Vol. 24h: $29.09 B uses elliptic curve cryptography (ECC) instead of RSA.
However, ECC is also vulnerable to Shor’s algorithm, a quantum computing method capable of factoring large numbers and solving logarithmic problems, both of which are fundamental to public key cryptography.
ECC helps in locking and unlocking digital data using mathematical calculations dubbed “curves” instead of big numbers. Although 256-bit ECC keys offer substantially greater security compared to 2048-bit RSA keys, quantum threats scale in a nonlinear manner. However, Gidney’s research has accelerated the timeline for when such attacks could become practical.
“I estimate that a 2048-bit RSA integer could be factored in under a week by a quantum computer with fewer than one million noisy qubits,” Gidney wrote. This marked a significant revision from his 2019 paper, which had estimated that achieving such a breakthrough would require 20 million qubits and eight hours of computation.
Quantum Computers Still Far from Breaking Cryptography
While there have been predictions of quantum computing breaking into cryptography codes, note that it is still not possible at the moment.
IBM’s most advanced quantum processor, Condor, operates with just over 1,100 qubits, while Google’s Sycamore reaches 53 qubits. Previously, reports also pointed out threats from Google’s Willow chip , launched last December.
Quantum computing, rooted in the principles of quantum mechanics, represents a fundamental shift from classical computing. Traditional bits represent a value of either 0 or 1, but quantum bits, or qubits, can exist as both 0 and 1 simultaneously thanks to phenomena such as superposition and entanglement.
This unique capability allows quantum computers to execute multiple calculations concurrently, presenting the potential to solve complex problems that remain unsolvable by classical systems.
“This is a 20-fold decrease in the number of qubits from our previous estimate,” said Gidney in a blog post . Researchers, including the quantum-focused team at Project 11, are investigating whether current quantum hardware is capable of breaking even simplified versions of Bitcoin’s encryption.
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