Can Bitcoin withstand future quantum attacks?

On December 10, Google announced a significant technology news:

Its latest developed quantum computer "Willow" has achieved two important milestones:

• Willow can reduce errors exponentially while using more qubits (with 105 physical qubits), solving the quantum error correction challenge that has been researched for nearly 30 years.

• Willow can complete a standard benchmark calculation in less than 5 minutes, while today's fastest supercomputer would take 10^25 (10,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000) years to complete this calculation, a time span longer than the age of the universe.

This marks a significant advancement for Google in the field of quantum computing.

However, Google also candidly stated in the news that a quantum computer applicable to commercial scenarios may not appear before 2030.

Quantum computing is also one of the most cutting-edge research fields in information technology.

In our crypto ecosystem, many readers have heard about quantum computing to some extent, as it poses a significant threat to the cornerstone of blockchain technology—cryptographic algorithms. More colloquially, quantum computers could theoretically break the cryptographic algorithms used in blockchain technology.

Seeing Google's achievement in quantum computing, many people, including many traditional media outlets online, have begun to claim:

Bitcoin is about to be doomed.

Two articles online have addressed this issue well. Of course, some of the data in them seems debatable to me, but overall, some core points from these two articles hit the nail on the head.

The links to the two articles are attached at the end, and below I excerpt two core points from these articles.

1. From the perspective of computing power and commercial use, current quantum computers are still far from threatening encrypted assets.

The Willow quantum computer currently has 105 qubits. However, Google's former senior product manager Kevin Rose pointed out that "breaking Bitcoin's encryption is estimated to require a quantum computer with about 13 million qubits to complete the decryption in 24 hours."

So, purely from the perspective of computing power, the number of qubits needed to break Bitcoin's encryption is more than 100,000 times that of Willow.

Moreover, even if the computing power is achieved, Google estimates that the possibility of commercializing quantum computers is unlikely before 2030.

This breaks the claim that "Bitcoin is doomed" from the perspectives of computing power and commercial use.

2. The application of encrypted assets has already taken precautions against quantum attacks.

Let's take Bitcoin as an example.

If we use a receiving address only once, it greatly reduces the risk of being attacked. Many Bitcoin wallets now adopt this method: using a receiving address only once.

Additionally, using Segregated Witness addresses to receive Bitcoin can also reduce the risk of quantum attacks.

Finally, Bitcoin's cryptographic algorithms have been evolving, and new quantum-resistant algorithms can be introduced in the future.

The Ethereum ecosystem has also been prepared in this regard, with Vitalik proposing a hard fork for Ethereum to introduce quantum-resistant algorithms.

Thus, many projects in the crypto ecosystem have already taken precautions against quantum attacks.

Therefore, for those of us deeply involved in the crypto ecosystem, if we can view this issue objectively, there is no need for excessive worry.

This topic is brought up for heated discussion every once in a while, and each discussion serves as a form of popular science, helping more and more people understand the real situation.

So we should focus more on the progress of the crypto ecosystem and not be disturbed by the noise of those outside who are unaware of the truth.