Google Alert: Bitcoin May Be Hacked Sooner Than We Think

A new scientific paper from Google's quantum research team may change what we know about Bitcoin. Google's researchers have revealed that RSA encryption, which protects systems from online banking to Bitcoin wallets, could be broken by quantum computers with less than 20 times the resources previously thought. In a study published in 2019, Google's quantum researcher Craig Gidney predicted that 2048-bit RSA encryption could be broken in eight hours with a quantum computer having 20 million noisy qubits. However, in his new study, he significantly revised this figure: This process can now be completed in less than a week with a quantum computer having fewer than 1 million qubits. Gidney wrote in his blog post that: "This represents a 20-fold reduction in the number of qubits compared to our previous estimates." This development does not mean that your Bitcoin password or online banking will be hacked immediately. Currently, IBM's most powerful quantum computer, known as Condor, has a capacity of 1,121 qubits; Google's Sycamore operates with only 53 qubits. However, the pace of advancement in the quantum field indicates that it could pose serious risks to security systems in the future. Google states that there are two main drivers behind this development: faster algorithms and more effective error correction methods. Researchers have managed to double the speed of one of the most challenging operations in encryption, "modular exponential computation." They also improved the error correction layer, allowing more "logical qubits" to operate in the same physical space. This significantly increases processing efficiency. Another technical improvement is a method called "magic state distillation," which allows quantum computers to perform complex tasks with higher accuracy and fewer resources. Unlike RSA, Bitcoin is protected by a system called elliptic curve encryption (ECC). However, both encryption systems are based on similar mathematical foundations. Google's new discovery about RSA may mean that ECC could also be broken sooner than expected. Although the 256-bit encryption that Bitcoin currently uses is quite strong, the exponential development of quantum computers could erode this security over time.