Google Researcher Warns Bitcoin Encryption Faces Quantum Computing Risks
Craig Gidney, a Quantum AI researcher at Google, highlighted increased risks to Bitcoin's encryption due to advancements in quantum computing. He noted that breaking RSA encryption now requires 20 times fewer quantum resources than previously estimated.
- The study focused on RSA encryption methods, integral to many crypto wallets and transactions.
- Bitcoin utilizes elliptic curve cryptography (ECC), which is also vulnerable to quantum attacks via Shor’s algorithm.
- While 256-bit ECC keys provide greater security compared to 2048-bit RSA keys, the threat from quantum computing increases nonlinearly.
- Gidney estimates that a quantum computer with less than one million noisy qubits could factor a 2048-bit RSA integer in under a week, a significant reduction from earlier estimates of 20 million qubits.
- Current quantum technology is not yet capable of breaking cryptographic codes; IBM’s Condor has over 1,100 qubits, while Google’s Sycamore has 53 qubits.
- Research teams are investigating whether current quantum hardware can break simplified versions of Bitcoin's encryption.
Quantum computing, leveraging principles like superposition and entanglement, allows for concurrent calculations, posing potential threats to traditional cryptography.