Google's Quantum Chip Willow Emerges, Does Its Supercomputing Power Threaten Bitcoin Security?
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Google's Quantum Chip Willow Emerges, Does Its Supercomputing Power Threaten Bitcoin Security?
Experts suggest that the Bitcoin community might need to consider freezing Satoshi Nakamoto's 1 million bitcoins.
Navigating Web3 tides with focused insightsAuthor: Weilin, PANews
On December 10, Google introduced its latest quantum chip, "Willow," on its official blog, reigniting discussions within the crypto community about quantum computing threats. Could quantum computing undermine existing cryptographic security mechanisms—particularly posing a risk to major cryptocurrencies like Bitcoin?
Partly influenced by this news, according to Coinglass data as of 2:20 PM on December 10, a sharp market correction triggered $1.758 billion in liquidations across the cryptocurrency market within 24 hours.
Google Unveils New Quantum Chip "Willow"
In its blog post, Google announced that the "Willow" quantum chip has achieved two major milestones. First, as the number of qubits (quantum bits, the unit of quantum information) increases, Willow achieves exponential error rate reduction—an essential breakthrough in quantum error correction, a challenge researchers have struggled with for nearly three decades. Second, Willow completed a standard benchmark computation in less than five minutes—a task that would take even today's fastest supercomputers 10^25 years, a figure far exceeding the age of the universe.
"This lends credibility to the view that quantum computing operates across multiple parallel universes, aligning with theories suggesting we live in a multiverse—a prediction first made by David Deutsch," said Hartmut Neven, founder and head of Google Quantum AI, in the blog post.
Qubits are the fundamental units of information and the core of quantum computing; the more qubits, the greater the computational power. However, increasing qubit count also raises error risks. If error rates become too high, computations become unreliable and yield incorrect results, making large-scale practical applications of quantum technology extremely difficult.
On December 9, Google CEO Sundar Pichai stated in an X post that Willow represents a significant step toward building "practical quantum computers," with potential real-world applications in drug discovery, nuclear fusion energy, and battery design.
Elon Musk, CEO of SpaceX, responded to Pichai’s post expressing admiration for Google’s achievement. Pichai replied that future collaboration could occur on Starship’s quantum cluster.
Is Cryptocurrency Security Under Threat? Opinions Diverge
Does Willow pose a threat to cryptocurrencies? Advances in quantum computing have long been seen as a potential inflection point for the crypto industry. If quantum computers can break current encryption algorithms, they might quickly expose user funds, creating massive theft risks. However, opinions on this matter vary widely.
Kevin Rose, tech entrepreneur and former senior product manager at Google, said in an X post on December 9 that Willow currently poses no immediate threat to cryptocurrencies. Rose noted that breaking Bitcoin’s encryption is estimated to require a quantum computer with around 13 million qubits to complete decryption within 24 hours. "In contrast, while Google’s Willow chip marks an important advancement, it only has 105 qubits," he said.
Emin Gün Sirer, founder of Avalanche, said this morning that while recent developments in quantum computing are impressive, they do not currently threaten cryptocurrency security. Current quantum computers are only suitable for a narrow range of tasks such as integer factorization and cannot reverse one-way hash functions. Mainstream blockchains like Bitcoin and Avalanche have inherent quantum resistance—their public keys are exposed only briefly, leaving attackers minimal time to act. Therefore, quantum computing remains incapable of threatening cryptocurrencies in the short term. When quantum threats eventually emerge, blockchains like Avalanche can swiftly adopt quantum-resistant signatures.
Haseeb Qureshi, partner at Dragonfly, shares a similar view and cites a Metaculus report predicting Shor’s algorithm won’t be able to break RSA keys until around 2040.
Bitcoin OG Ben Sigman also pointed out on his X platform post that Bitcoin users should not worry about this development, stating, “Cryptography is still secure… at least for now.”
Nonetheless, David Marcus, CEO of payment platform Lightspark, said he believes most people “don’t yet fully grasp” the significance of Google’s breakthrough. Marcus emphasized that this means “post-quantum cryptography and encryption technologies need to accelerate development.”
In fact, Ethereum co-founder Vitalik Buterin has already proposed a way to mitigate quantum risks. In an X post from March, he explained that a simple hard fork could resolve the issue. Buterin stated that blockchains would require a hard fork, and users would need to download updated wallet software—but most users would not lose funds.
Quantum Computing and Bitcoin: Experts Suggest Freezing Satoshi’s 1 Million BTC
Bitcoin’s crucial Proof-of-Work (PoW) mechanism requires miners to solve complex mathematical problems to validate transactions and secure the network. However, quantum computing’s unprecedented processing speed may disrupt this balance.
Quantum algorithms such as Grover’s algorithm could theoretically solve these problems faster than classical computers. This capability could centralize mining power, undermining Bitcoin’s decentralized ethos.
According to Dan A. Bard, faculty member at Kent University, assuming both Bitcoin’s hash rate and quantum computing capabilities grow at the same pace under Moore’s Law, it may take approximately 27 years before a single quantum computer could surpass all other miners on the network and gain full control.
Additionally, Bitcoin’s Elliptic Curve Cryptography (ECC), which secures wallet addresses, faces potential risks. Future quantum computers might use Shor’s algorithm to break ECC, exposing Bitcoin transactions to security vulnerabilities. This vulnerability particularly affects well-known early addresses, including a substantial portion held by Bitcoin’s creator, Satoshi Nakamoto.
Emin Gün Sirer, mentioned earlier, referenced this serious scenario when replying to Haseeb’s post: “Haseeb reminded me—Satoshi’s 1 million Bitcoins could indeed face quantum threats. Early Bitcoin used very old Pay-To-Public-Key (P2PK) formats, which leak public keys, giving attackers time to work on cracking them. This is the root of all cryptographic bounties. Modern Bitcoin wallets or systems like Avalanche don’t use P2PK, but it did exist in Bitcoin’s early days. As quantum threats intensify, the Bitcoin community may need to consider freezing Satoshi’s 1 million BTC—or more broadly, set a final date and freeze all Bitcoin on P2PK UTXOs.”
"Once a public key is revealed, a modified version of Shor’s algorithm targeting ECDSA can run on an ideal quantum computer to find the private key in polynomial time. Classical methods for solving this are super-polynomial, orders of magnitude slower... Polynomial time makes it potentially feasible. Researchers suspect ECDSA will eventually be broken by quantum computers," wrote researchers at Acheron Trading.
Meanwhile, the Bitcoin community appears unlikely to shift from the Proof-of-Work (PoW) mechanism to alternative consensus models like Proof-of-Stake (PoS). Even cryptographer Adam Back stated that PoS-based cryptocurrencies lack immutability, decentralization, and verifiable high production costs, highlighting their fundamental differences from Bitcoin.
"As sound money, it must be immutable, decentralized, and have verifiable costliness in production. The technological structure is designed for economic stability and is practically difficult to modify. PoS coins lack these traits—they have CEOs and dozens of competitors. Bitcoin has only one," Back said.
This resistance to change reflects the Bitcoin community’s awareness and the importance of proactively addressing quantum threats. Although quantum computing dangers have not yet materialized, proactive safeguards remain crucial to protecting the Bitcoin network against future quantum attacks.
However, others—including some quantum computing developers—argue such concerns are unnecessary. By the time quantum computers become reliable and powerful enough to attack Bitcoin, blockchain developers will likely have already patched the vulnerable components.
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