Q-Day's Creeping Closer: Ripple's Research Head Runs the Numbers on Google's 2029 Cryptography Alarm

Ripple Head of Research Aanchal Malhotra has waded into the quantum computing discourse that's been keeping crypto Twitter up at night, because apparently sleeping soundly while holding digital assets wasn't already hard enough.

In a March 31 blog post, Google Researchers dropped a sobering note: future quantum computers could break elliptic-curve cryptography—the encryption backbone powering much of the market. The paper suggests quantum machines may eventually crack the cryptography securing Bitcoin and other digital assets with fewer resources than previously estimated, heating up the industry's preparedness conversation.

Crucially, the research is meant as a heads-up, not a panic button. Think of it as your quantum landlord texting that rent's going up—not today, but definitely sometime before 2030.

Malhotra weighed in via tweet on April 1, breaking down why Google's post-quantum migration deadline landed on 2029.

"Google Quantum AI just gave us a clearer picture of why they set their post-quantum migration deadline to 2029," she wrote.

The search giant recently announced plans to migrate its own security infrastructure to post-quantum cryptography by 2029. According to Malhotra, Google discovered a significantly improved quantum algorithm for breaking elliptic curves—but isn't publishing it. Instead, they validated the result using a zero-knowledge proof, allowing verification without exposing the attack method. Because nothing says "trust us, this is bad" like proving you know something exists without telling anyone what it is.

"That's worth sitting with," she noted.

Malhotra also shared some technical context: cracking ECDLP-256 would require roughly 500,000 physical qubits on superconducting hardware. That's approximately a 20x improvement over prior estimates, bringing runtime down to mere minutes.

The takeaway? No one's emptying wallets tomorrow. But the timeline is tightening faster than the industry anticipated. Q-Day isn't here yet, but it's doing that thing your deadline does—creeping closer while you pretend you have more time.

As for XRP Ledger—it's not quantum-proof just yet, but the groundwork is being laid. Last December, the XRPL Alpha testnet integrated Dilithium-based cryptography, marking the opening phase of building quantum resistance into the protocol.