If you invest in cryptocurrencies and think it will be another 100 years before quantum computers threaten BTC and company, it’s high time to catch up. Google has just published a report that should attract the attention of every cryptocurrency investor. According to the Mountain View giant, this moment is fast approaching and may soon change the landscape of the digital assets market.
Quantum race against time – Google warns
Google has been working on a responsible transition to post-quantum cryptography since 2016. The company’s latest report reveals disturbing calculations: future quantum computers could break elliptic curve encryption (ECC) – the security foundation of most blockchains and cryptocurrencies – using much less resources than previously expected.
Specifically? Google engineers managed to compile quantum circuits implementing Shor’s algorithm for the 256-bit discrete logarithm problem (ECDLP-256). One of the variants uses less than 1,200 logical qubits and 90 million Toffoli gates, the other – less than 1,450 qubits and 70 million gates. What does this mean in practice?
A quantum computer with fewer than 500,000 physical qubits could break this encryption in just a few minutes. This is a reduction of approximately 20 times the required resources compared to previous estimates and is not good news for HODLers.
Bitcoin, Ethereum and all the rest are within reach
The vast majority of blockchain technologies (Bitcoin, Ethereum and dozens of other projects) base their critical security mechanisms on ECDLP-256. Private keys, transaction signatures, wallet integrity, all rest on a foundation that a quantum computer of sufficient scale could break in minutes.
Google sets a specific horizon here: 2029 year as the cut-off date for its post-quantum cryptography (PQC) migration roadmap. Coinbase, the Stanford Institute for Blockchain Research and the Ethereum Foundation have already cooperated on this project.
Responsible disclosure, not panic
What should you do?
Google explicitly recommends – avoid revealing and using the same wallet addresses multiple times. In turn, the industry should immediately accelerate the implementation of PQC. Time is against those who prefer to wait.
The quantum apocalypse of cryptocurrencies is not science fiction, but a reality flickering on the horizon.
