Google Quantum AI Study Reveals Growing Risk of Cryptocurrency Compromise

A new study by Google Quantum AI has made significant progress in reducing the estimated hardware requirements to break elliptic-curve cryptography, a widely used encryption method in cryptocurrencies such as Bitcoin and Ethereum.

The researchers found that Shor's algorithm for the 256-bit elliptic curve discrete logarithm problem can run on a superconducting quantum computer with fewer than 500,000 physical qubits in a few minutes. This is a 20-fold reduction from previous estimates.

The study also revealed that about 6.7 million BTC are sitting in vulnerable addresses, equivalent to roughly $444 billion or nearly 32% of Bitcoin's total cap. The researchers noted that these coins cannot be migrated simply by asking current users to move funds, as many are thought to be abandoned, lost, or inactive.

While the study does not predict an immediate risk, it suggests a growing likelihood of quantum computers compromising private keys in the near future. Ethereum Foundation's Justin Drake said his confidence in a 'Q-day' by 2032 had risen sharply, with at least a 10% chance that a quantum computer could recover a secp256k1 private key from an exposed public key by then.