Quantum Computing Got 20x Closer. It Threatens A Third of All Bitcoin

Google just set a deadline. Quantum computers could break Bitcoin's encryption by 2029. Are blockchains ready?

Sponsored by ⁠Nexo⁠

Nexo is the premier digital wealth platform. Receive interest on your crypto, borrow against it without selling, and trade a range of assets. Now available in the U.S with 30 days of exclusive privileges. 

Get started at http://nexo.com/unchained

Google and Oratomic published quantum computing research on the same day, and together they redraw the timeline for when blockchains need to be post-quantum secure.

Google's paper, co-authored by Ethereum Foundation researcher Justin Drake and Stanford cryptographer Dan Boneh, estimates 2029 for breaking the elliptic curve cryptography that protects Bitcoin and Ethereum.

Oratomic's findings are sharper: utility-scale quantum computers may need only 10,000 qubits, not the millions previously assumed, and the company already has 6,000 in the lab.

With 6.7 million BTC in vulnerable addresses and a newly identified 9-minute attack window on unspent Bitcoin transactions, the question is no longer whether blockchains need to migrate. It's whether they can do it fast enough.

Guests:

• ⁠Alex Pruden, Co-Founder & CEO, Project Eleven

• ⁠Dolev Bluvstein, CEO of Oratomic

Links:

• Unchained:

• Q-Day Is Imminent. Can Bitcoin Survive the Quantum Threat?

• Solana Deploys Post-Quantum Signatures on Testnet

• Is Nic Carter Exaggerating Bitcoin's Quantum Risk? Yes, Says One Core Dev

• Research Papers:

• Google: Securing Elliptic Curve Cryptocurrencies Against Quantum Vulnerabilities

• Oratomic: Shor's Algorithm with as Few as 10,000 Reconfigurable Atomic Qubits (arXiv)

• Caltech: Useful Quantum Computers Could Be Built with as Few as 10,000 Qubits

• Companies & Tools:

• Project Eleven

• Project Eleven: Yellow Pages

• Oratomic

• BIP 360: Pay-to-Merkle-Root (P2MR)

• Standards & Infrastructure:

• NIST Post-Quantum Cryptography Standards

• Cloudflare: State of the Post-Quantum Internet

• Google Quantum AI: Willow & Error Correction

• Algorand: Quantum-Resistant Falcon Signatures

Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices