Alice & Bob say 30,000-qubit model could break bitcoin cryptography
A team from Alice & Bob has come up with a new quantum computing model that could break bitcoin's cryptography using just 30,000 qubits, way less than the fewer than 500,000 physical qubits Google estimated earlier this year.
This means bitcoin's security might be at risk sooner than expected, especially for wallets with exposed public keys.
Over 6 million bitcoins at quantum risk
Over 6 million bitcoins are sitting in addresses that could be vulnerable if quantum computers keep advancing this fast.
The researchers say it currently takes about 62 minutes to break a key, not fast enough to snatch transactions as they happen, but that could change soon.
As Dahmun Goudarzi, senior cryptanalyst at Alice & Bob, puts it, "Yes, it becomes of utmost importance that migration starts now," followed by "We know how hard and long this task can be, and this paper shows that Shor's algorithm could be run sooner than later."