A Google research paper has shed light on the potential threat posed by quantum computers to the security of Bitcoin and Ethereum. The study predicts that fewer than 500,000 physical qubits could crack the 256-bit elliptic curve cryptography, widely used across the industry.
This is a significant drop from earlier estimates, which suggested that around 10 million qubits would be required to break the same level of encryption. The Google researchers expect this vulnerability to occur sooner than previously thought.