Quantum computing firm Alice & Bob has published research claiming that breaking Bitcoin's 256-bit elliptic curve key (ECDLP-256) could require as few as 29,588 physical qubits and approximately 62 minutes using its cat qubit architecture — a roughly 17-fold reduction from Google's March estimate of fewer than 500,000 qubits.
While the 62-minute timeframe still exceeds Bitcoin's ~10-minute average block time, making it difficult to steal funds before transaction confirmation, the findings raise concerns for the more than 6 million BTC held in addresses with already-exposed public keys. The company estimates RSA-2048 would require about 22,593 physical qubits and 3.14 days to crack.
Alice & Bob emphasizes these remain theoretical estimates but expects hardware advances and declining resource requirements to converge in the early 2030s, urging Bitcoin to begin its quantum-resistant migration promptly.
Bitcoin Quantum Threat Narrows: New Research Cuts Qubit Estimate to ~30,000
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