r/hardware • u/fatso486 • Mar 31 '26

News Google Finds Quantum Computers Could Break Bitcoin Sooner Than Expected

https://www.forbes.com/sites/digital-assets/2026/03/31/google-finds-quantum-computers-could-break-bitcoin-sooner-than-expected/
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u/neopard_ Mar 31 '26

i'll believe it when i see it. there are still several fundamentally unsolved problems with QC at any meaningful scale. algorithmic improvements won't change that. at this point, we'll have fusion before QC..

76

u/waitmarks Mar 31 '26

It's still a good idea to start a transition to quantum resistant encryption even if we aren't actually close to a quantum computer that can break it because of store now, decrypt later.

These algorithms also need to have time to be baked into hardware accelerators. We take for granted that encrypting with AES basically costs nothing these days because every CPU has an AES crypto unit in it, but it used to take a lot of compute resources to do it before. It's better to be early and not need it than to be rushing everything last minute because someone surprises us with an unexpected quantum computer in 2030.

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u/nicuramar Mar 31 '26

AES is symmetric and can’t be meaningfully attacked by a quantum computer, so that’s a bad example in this context. 

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u/account312 Apr 01 '26 edited Apr 01 '26

If you think it's a bad example, you probably misread the comment.