Google just set a deadline. Quantum computers could break Bitcoin's encryption by 2029. Are blockchains ready?

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Google and Oratomic published quantum computing research on the same day, and together they redraw the timeline for when blockchains need to be post-quantum secure.

Google's paper, co-authored by Ethereum Foundation researcher Justin Drake and Stanford cryptographer Dan Boneh, estimates 2029 for breaking the elliptic curve cryptography that protects Bitcoin and Ethereum.

Oratomic's findings are sharper: utility-scale quantum computers may need only 10,000 qubits, not the millions previously assumed, and the company already has 6,000 in the lab.

With 6.7 million BTC in vulnerable addresses and a newly identified 9-minute attack window on unspent Bitcoin transactions, the question is no longer whether blockchains need to migrate. It's whether they can do it fast enough.

Guests:

• ⁠Alex Pruden, Co-Founder & CEO, Project Eleven

• ⁠Dolev Bluvstein, CEO of Oratomic

Links:

• Unchained:

• • Q-Day Is Imminent. Can Bitcoin Survive the Quantum Threat?

  • Solana Deploys Post-Quantum Signatures on Testnet

  • Is Nic Carter Exaggerating Bitcoin's Quantum Risk? Yes, Says One Core Dev

• Research Papers:

• • Google: Securing Elliptic Curve Cryptocurrencies Against Quantum Vulnerabilities

  • Oratomic: Shor's Algorithm with as Few as 10,000 Reconfigurable Atomic Qubits (arXiv)

  • Caltech: Useful Quantum Computers Could Be Built with as Few as 10,000 Qubits

• Companies & Tools:

• • Project Eleven

  • Project Eleven: Yellow Pages

  • Oratomic

  • BIP 360: Pay-to-Merkle-Root (P2MR)

• Standards & Infrastructure:

• • NIST Post-Quantum Cryptography Standards

  • Cloudflare: State of the Post-Quantum Internet

  • Google Quantum AI: Willow & Error Correction

  • Algorand: Quantum-Resistant Falcon Signatures

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