Google’s Willow Quantum Chip: Bitcoin At Risk?

Quantum Chip Willow By Google A Threat To Bitcoin?

Google’s Quantum Chip, Willow: A Risk To Bitcoin’s Existence?

Google has recently released its newly developed quantum chip, named Willow. This has now become the talk of the town for the crypto enthusiasts, as the chip’s considered a threat to the existence of Bitcoin, the first decentralized cryptocurrency.

Development of quantum technology has been a threat to the crypto world. And now that the very advanced chip has been introduced, it has increased speculations over the impact on Bitcoin’s strong encryption.

What is Willow?

Coming to the quantum chip, Willow, it is a significant advancement in quantum computing. It has been able to solve a complex mathematical problem within five minutes, that would have taken longer than the universe’s history for a classical computer to solve. It was a 30-year challenge that has now been reached and the creators are further scaling up to use more qubits.

Bitcoin’s Working

There are two main cryptographic algorithms on which Bitcoin depends. They are the Elliptic Curve Digital Signature Algorithm (ECDSA) for encryption and SHA-256 for hashing. The former needs to be broken for a quantum computer to solve the Elliptic Curve Discrete Logarithm Problem (ECDLP) using Shor’s algorithm. This requires millions of error-corrected logical qubits.

Bitcoin Still Far From Threat

The currently released Willow is composed of 105 physical qubits, far less than the millions required to break the ECDSA. This makes it capable of solving problems faster than classical computers, but not capable enough to break or crack the Bitcoin encryption. At least 13 million qubits, on an average, are going to be needed for the task to be performed in a day.

Moreover, the qubits should be stable and error-free over long periods, which is not the case with the current Willow.

It can hence be said that the possibility of Bitcoin getting cracked by quantum computing is far away, at least, for now. 10-20 years of continued progress is a must to come to a quantum computer that would decode the Bitcoin encryption.

Crypto Community On Its Way To Developing Quantum-Safe Solutions

Given the threat of decoding, the crypto community is already on its way to coming up with quantum-safe cryptographic protocols. This is to protect Bitcoin as well as other digital assets.

Mixed Reactions From The Crypto Community

With the release of Willow by Google, the community of crypto has plunged into giving its individual solutions and reactions. While come consider the current development not powerful enough to cause harm to the crypto world, others have started giving temporary solutions to stay strong and confident. Some of these solutions include freezing vulnerable holdings, and/or putting expiration dates on outdated cryptographic standards.