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Google's recent announcement of the arrival of Willow, a quantum chip that has reduced the error tendencies of some of its predecessors, is a milestone in the effort to bring quantum computing into the real world, and in the years ahead, it could change the way we think about the risk in cryptocurrencies.
Willow's speed is almost incomprehensible — according to Google, it's able to perform a computation in under five minutes that would take one of today's fastest supercomputers 10 septillion years to solve. Ten septillion is 10,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000 years.
But the accuracy of quantum computing has, until now, also been a big issue, with quantum like a garden hose on full blast with no one holding it: the water is coming out fast, but its aim is not consistently accurate. Willow's combination of speed and accuracy could theoretically provide hackers with the tools to unlock the algorithms that bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies are built upon.
Qubits and bitcoin can coexist, for now
If you don't understand (not many people do) what makes up quantum computing — qubits — security company DigiCert's industry technology strategist, Tim Hollebeek, has a simplified way of thinking about the breakthrough. He says imagine a maze and how a classical computer would try to find its way through the maze from start to finish. It would try one potential path at a time. "A quantum computer would be able to try each path at the same time, resulting in a much faster solution," Hollebeek said.
While Willow may not be ready for real-world applications yet, Willow's speed and accuracy will help pave the way for larger-scale quantum computers.
"Part of the issue with qubits is that they are unstable and produce errors. This chip has significant error correction capabilities, which mitigates some of the qubit issues," Hollebeek said.
That means chips improving upon Willow's breakthrough will be able to help hackers target crypto — but at least for the moment, the concern is only theoretical.
"Quantum computers can theoretically solve this much faster and pose a threat to today's cryptographic algorithms if a quantum computer with sufficient qubits could be developed," Hollebeek said. But he added that the real-world reason for breathing easier today if you own crypto is simple. "None exist today and are not expected for at least another 5, 10, 15 years," he said, with the fastest five-year timeline contingent on some unforeseen technological breakthrough.
A decade-long lead for crypto
A Google spokesman told CNBC that Willow and crypto can coexist. "The Willow chip is incapable of breaking modern cryptography," he said, adding that it is also the view of Google that quantum technology with that capability is still years off.
In fact, according to Park Feierbach, an expert in decentralized finance technology who is CEO of Radiant Commons, even if Willow can drastically increase the speed at which crypto could be broken, it would still take several times the age of the universe for the quantum chip to do it. According to NASA, the universe is 13.7 billion years old.
"There's almost no reason to deploy Willow on this technology in a way that could make tractable progress. It would simply still take too long," Feierbach said.
"Estimates are we're at least 10 years out from breaking RSA, and that around 4 million physical qubits would be required to do this," the Google spokesman said. RSA is an encryption system used in cryptocurrencies.
For reference, Google's processors are now on the scale of about 100 physical qubits.
'Quantum-safe' algorithms
The Google spokesman stressed that the timeline for quantum breakthroughs has been widely shared and Willow has not changed it.
"Google is on track with our planned roadmap," he said. "The security community has long been aware of the projected timeline to break asymmetric encryption, and has been working on defining standards and collaboratively implementing new algorithms that will resist attacks by both classical and quantum computers," the spokesman added.
Indeed, Hollebeek says that the crypto industry is working on "quantum-safe" crypto.
The National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) has released several quantum-safe algorithms that are resistant to attacks by future quantum computers, Hollebeek said, and NIST has a timeline for governments and industry to deploy these algorithms to ensure the safety of the nation's and businesses secrets.
"Google and other industry leaders have supported standardization and experimented with the algorithms in their draft form," the Google spokesman said.
Despite how efficient quantum is at unlocking algorithms (traditional crypto equations based on factoring huge prime numbers), it isn't infallible, and that is where the promise lies in quantum-safe crypto.
"They're really, really good at some things, but not everything," Hollebeek said, noting that breaking conventional asymmetric cryptography just happens to be one of the things they are really good at. "Luckily, there are other hard math problems they are bad at, and asymmetric cryptography can be updated to use those hard math problems instead of factoring," he said.
Taqi Raza, assistant professor of electrical and computer engineering at the University of Massachusetts Amherst, said existing cryptos will have to evolve to ward off qubits. "As the potential for quantum computers to break existing cryptography becomes more of a concern, new cryptocurrencies specifically designed to be quantum-safe could be developed. These new quantum cryptos would integrate PQC, cryptographic algorithms that are resistant to the computational power of quantum computers," Raza said.
Jeremy Allaire, co-founder, chairman & CEO of digital currency company Circle, told CNBC in an interview last week that the risk is real, but his view of the future remains focused on the opportunities that will evolve. "The bottom line is quantum crypto means that you can both unlock things more easily, things that had bad old locks, but you can also create better locks," Allaire said. "So quantum crypto – this quantum is going to be actually a huge turbocharge to crypto computing, to crypto applications, and to crypto money."
Raza thinks that ultimately the more sweeping changes wrought by quantum computing will occur beyond crypto. Breakthroughs will make devices and software faster, revolutionize AI, and improve data security with ultra-secure encryption methods. In everyday life, there will be advances in computing, healthcare, energy, and security, Raza said, and as a result, it is not the crypto industry we should be thinking about in isolation while these changes are still developing. "They will likely transform industries," he said.
