It sounds out of a sci-fi video game, but new research suggest quantum 
attackers could break Bitcoin’s blockchain and steal coins mid-transaction 
sooner than it was originally expected. Is Doomsday Near For Bitcoin? A new 
whitepaper and blogpost published on Tuesday by Google’s Quantum AI team 
claims that Bitcoin and Ethereum’s cryptography can be broken with fewer than 
500,000 physical qubits and roughly 1,200 “logical” qubits, far below the 
“millions” that used to be cited. Related Reading: Hyperliquid’s Tokyo Edge 
Exposed — Secret Time Gap Is Tilting The Market Most blockchains and 
cryptocurrencies protect wallets and transactions using 256‑bit elliptic curve 
cryptography (a very strong mathematical lock) based on the discrete logarithm 
problem (ECDLP‑256). The research points at a significant decreased in the 
resources needed to break the ECDLP-256. The blog post says: We estimate that 
these circuits can be executed on a superconducting qubit CRQC with fewer than 
500,000 physical qubits in a few minutes, given standard assumptions about 
hardware capabilities that are consistent with some of Google’s flagship 
quantum processors. This is an approximately 20-fold reduction in the number 
of physical qubits required to solve ECDLP-256 and a continuation of a long 
history of gradual optimization in compiling quantum algorithms to fault- 
tolerant circuits. “Cryptographically-relevant quantum computers (CRQS) pose a 
threat to widely deployed public-key cryptography”, the whitepaper claims. 
Instead of attacking wallets, the research models a live attack where a 
quantum adversary could steal bitcoin mid‑transaction in about 9 minutes by 
quickly using the briefly revealed public key to calculate the private key, 
giving a 41% chance of beating Bitcoin’s 10‑minute block time. In this sense, 
Ethereum might be less vulnerable than Bitcoin, as it confirms its 
transactions faster. The Culprit: Taproot This results put Taproot, Bitcoin’s 
2021 upgrade, in a different perspective. Although Taproot boosted privacy and 
efficiency, it started exposing public keys on‑chain by default, stripping 
away the “hash-first” protective layer that older address formats had. 
Therefore, it has widened the pool of quantum‑exposed coins to about 6.9 
million BTC, including Satoshi‑era and heavily reused addresses. A quantum 
computer is a computer that uses the rules of quantum physics to process 
information in ways normal computers can’t. Instead of bits that are either 0 
or 1, it uses qubits, which can be 0, 1, or a blend of both at the same time, 
letting the machine explore many possibilities in parallel. Classical 
computers explore possibilities one‑by‑one (even if very fast). This means 
that, for certain math problems (like factoring huge numbers used in 
cryptography), a powerful quantum computer could solve in minutes what would 
take a classical supercomputer longer than the age of the universe. What This 
Means For Concerned Traders Despite it is true that no such machine exists 
yet, earlier this month Google set 2029 as an internal deadline for 
post‑quantum migration, compressing the perceived timeline for “Q‑day.” 
Researchers warn that post-quantum migration will take years, even if the 
hardware is not here yet. Related Reading: Over Half Of US Crypto Users Don’t 
Understand This Scary Tax Rule On the social network X, some users have 
already expressed their quantum panic. Coin Metric co-founder and Bitcoin 
advocate Nic Carter highlighted another paper released today from Oratomic, 
Caltech and UC Berkeley, showing quantum computers can break crypto with just 
10,000 reconfigurable atomic qubits. and the craziest thing is that the Google 
Quantum AI paper (above) is maybe not even the most concerning quantum paper 
released _today_https://t.co/mSZi5Lk7do — nic carter (@nic_carter) March 31, 
2026 Roughly one‑third of Bitcoin&#8217;s supply is now modeled as potentially 
quantum‑exposed over a long enough horizon, which could change how desks value 
old coins, Taproot usage and address‑reuse hygiene. Traders should watch for 
Taproot adoption metrics, progress or gridlock around BIP‑360‑style upgrades, 
and whether Bitcoin devs move toward a dated migration plan as Google’s 2029 
clock ticks louder. At the moment of writing, BTC trades for the highs $66k. 
Source: BTCUSD on Tradingview Cover image from Perplexity, BTCUSD chart from 
Tradingview

Google Says End For Bitcoin Is Near? Quantum Computers Could Attack Crypto This Soon

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