A Scientific Paper That Could Change What Is Known About Bitcoin Has Arrived from Google: "Easier to Crack Than Expected by 20 Times"

A new scientific paper from Google's quantum research team could change what is known about Bitcoin.

Google researchers have announced that RSA encryption, which protects many systems from internet banking to Bitcoin wallets, could be broken by quantum computers with 20 times fewer resources than previously thought.

Google Quantum Researcher Craig Gidney predicted in a study published in 2019 that 2048-bit RSA encryption could be broken in eight hours by a quantum computer with 20 million noisy (qubits. However, in his new study, he significantly revised this number: Now, this process can be accomplished in less than a week with a quantum computer having fewer than 1 million qubits.

Gidney stated in the blog post, "This represents a 20-fold decrease in the number of qubits compared to our previous estimate."

This development does not immediately mean that your Bitcoin or internet banking passwords will be cracked. Currently, IBM's strongest quantum computer, named Condor, has a capacity of 1,121 qubits; Google's Sycamore, on the other hand, 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 stated that there are two main factors behind this development: faster algorithms and more efficient error correction methods. Researchers have managed to double the speed of "modular exponentiation," one of the heaviest operations in encryption. Additionally, by improving the error correction layer, they have made it possible to operate more "logical qubits" in the same physical space. As a result, processing efficiency has significantly increased.

Another technical innovation is a method called "magic state cultivation." With this method, quantum computers can perform complex tasks with higher accuracy using fewer resources.

Bitcoin is protected by a system called elliptic curve cryptography )ECC(, unlike RSA. However, both encryption systems are based on similar mathematical foundations. Google’s new findings on RSA may indicate that ECC could also be broken earlier than expected. Although the 256-bit encryption used by Bitcoin is currently quite strong, the exponential development of quantum computers may erode this security over time.