Quantum Computing's 'Oops, We Underestimated' Moment: Bitcoin's Encryption Just Got a Deadline

Caltech researchers have delivered a not-so-comforting update: quantum computers might crack modern cryptography with just 10,000–20,000 qubits, far fewer than the million-qubit estimates that have kept the crypto world sleeping soundly. For those who've been using "quantum supremacy is always 20 years away" as their excuse to ignore existential risk, bad news—your copium might be expiring sooner than your altcoin portfolio.

In a study published Monday, Caltech partnered with Pasadena-based quantum startup Oratomic to develop a new neutral-atom system where individual atoms, trapped and controlled by lasers, serve as qubits. This approach could enable a fault-tolerant quantum computer to run Shor's algorithm—the cryptographic apocalypse button that derives private keys from public keys—with as few as 10,000 reconfigurable atomic qubits. Imagine your private key being doxxed by a really sophisticated toaster.

"People are used to quantum computers always being 10 years away," Oratomic co-founder and CEO Dolev Bluvstein told Decrypt. "But when you look at where we were a little over ten years ago, the best estimates of what would be required for Shor's algorithm were one billion qubits at a time when the best systems we had in the lab were roughly five qubits." That's like estimating you need a billion dollars to start a DAO, then watching someone rugpull with five.

Today's error-correction systems typically need around 1,000 physical qubits to create one reliable logical qubit, which has pushed practical machine estimates into the million-qubit range. But here's the kicker: current lab systems are already hitting—and in some cases exceeding—6,000 physical qubits. We're not quite at "your seeds are compromised" territory yet, but we're closer than your aunt's birthday and much closer than you thought.

In September, Caltech researchers unveiled a neutral-atom quantum computer operating 6,100 qubits with 99.98% accuracy and 13-second coherence times. Meanwhile, Google researchers reported new findings suggesting future quantum computers could break elliptic curve cryptography with even fewer resources. At this rate, ECDSA might become the new MD5—useful only for teaching developers what not to do.

"Just having 10,000 physical qubits is something that could happen within a year," Bluvstein noted. "But that's