Google's Quantum Leap Leaves Experienced Bitcoiners Unfazed, But Preparations Needed
As tech giant Google announced a breakthrough in its quantum computing research, it spooked some Bitcoiners, while more experienced ones claim it is still a "nothing burger." Yet, more research is needed in quantum-resistant cryptography to help Bitcoin (BTC) withstand a potential attack by a quantum computer.
Google introduced its latest quantum chip, Willow, which, according to the company, can reduce errors exponentially as they scale up using more qubits—a basic unit of quantum information. Additionally, they stated that Willow performed a standard benchmark computation in under five minutes, a task that would take one of today’s fastest supercomputers 10 septillion years.
This has prompted questions across the Bitcoin and crypto world about whether blockchains are now at risk of being successfully attacked by a quantum computer in an attempt to steal coins or tamper with these digital chains in any other way.
The main response lies in the number of qubits that Willow has managed to achieve—105.
Meanwhile, the consensus among cryptographers is that to crack Bitcoin's encryption, millions of error-corrected qubits would be needed.
Gustavo Flores Echaiz, founder of the Bitcoin trading platform Swapido and contributor to a technical newsletter on Bitcoin technology developments, Bitcoin Optech, stressed that even if the required millions of qubits were achieved, "only a fraction of bitcoins would be at risk," such as those stored in addresses older than 2011 and BTC being stored in reused addresses, where the public key of the address is exposed. In that case, a quantum computer could, in theory, derive a private key from the public key and access BTC.
Among such addresses at risk are those belonging to Satoshi Nakamoto, the mysterious creator of Bitcoin, which store up to an estimated 1.1 million BTC, or $107.4 billion at today's prices. These coins have never been moved since Satoshi disappeared.
In either case, Jameson Lopp, Bitcoin security expert and co-founder of BTC custody solutions provider Casa, recently commented on the quantum computer threat, stating, "We can see the trends, but can't precisely predict the point at which we're all screwed."
"If we wait until we know for sure, it's probably too late to take action," Lopp added. He recently gave a more detailed overview of potential threats and solutions in a talk during a BTC conference.
The work to prepare Bitcoin for the post-quantum computing world is already ongoing.
Questionable supremacy
Meanwhile, in 2019, Google claimed "quantum supremacy" with its 54-qubit processor, named "Sycamore," meaning that in five years, it managed to add only 51 qubits.
"In case you didn't follow that, Google's 2019 quantum supremacy claim was questioned by IBM pretty much as soon as the claim was made, and a few years later, a group said they did it on a conventional computer in a similar time," physicist Sabine Hossenfelder noted.
According to her, "while the announcement is super impressive from a scientific [point of view] and all, the consequences for everyday life are zero," and we're still "about 1 million qubits away" from practically useful applications.