Quantum Computing Breakthrough Slashes Bitcoin and Ethereum Threat

Researchers have made significant progress in reducing the estimated quantum computing resources needed to potentially threaten Bitcoin and Ethereum's cryptography. A new study, involving researchers from the Ethereum Foundation, Theta Labs, StarkWare, and other organizations, has optimized point addition, a calculation repeatedly used within Shor's algorithm.

The paper outlines a quantum circuit requiring 1,151 logical qubits and roughly 1.3 million Toffoli gates. Its combined resource score is approximately 1.5 billion, more than 50% below the roughly 3 billion benchmark published by Google Quantum AI in March. This represents a major breakthrough in the field of quantum computing and cryptography.

The study's findings are relevant to Bitcoin and Ethereum's long-term security because they rely on secp256k1 cryptography. A sufficiently powerful quantum computer running Shor's algorithm could theoretically derive a private key from an exposed public key, potentially allowing an attacker to authorize cryptocurrency transactions.

However, the researchers caution that the comparison is not exact due to different interfaces and accounting methods used in the two designs. The study also notes that resource requirements are continuing to decline, with later designs reducing the score to approximately 1.26 billion and even further with a requirement of 813 logical qubits.