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GOOGLE JUST MOVED THE CRYPTO QUANTUM THREAT FROM "SOMEDAY" TO "2029" 📆

Google dropped a whitepaper yesterday that has the entire crypto world talking/panicking.

It was co-authored with the Ethereum Foundation - and the core message is simple: 

The quantum computer needed to crack the encryption protecting almost every crypto wallet just got way smaller and way cheaper than anyone previously assumed.

Let's break it down - starting with how crypto security works right now… 

You've got a private key (the key to your front door) and a public key (your home address, which anyone can see). 

The math connecting them is so insanely hard that no normal computer could ever reverse-engineer your private key from your public key.

That's the whole promise.

But a quantum computer can run something called Shor's algorithm (a shortcut that exploits quantum physics) to do exactly that - turning your public key into your private key, and allowing hackers with sufficient quantum compute power to walk right in and take your coins.

Now, the big question has always been: 

How powerful does that quantum computer need to be?

Until this week, the best estimates said you'd need around 10M physical qubits (qubits are the basic processing units of a quantum computer, kind of like transistors in a regular chip). 

Ten million felt safely far away (like, decades-out - Google's own Willow chip only runs 105 qubits)...

But Google just slashed that number to fewer than 500,000 qubits (a 20x reduction) - while other research is even more aggressive with its estimates:

We just went from "the finish line is on another planet" to "you can squint and see it from here."

So what's actually at risk?

GOOGLE JUST MOVED THE CRYPTO QUANTUM THREAT FROM "SOMEDAY" TO "2029" (P2) 📆

About 6.9M BTC have their public keys already visible on the blockchain right now. 

Old wallets. Reused addresses. Coins from the early days.

The biggest name on that list? 

Satoshi Nakamoto.

Satoshi's Bitcoin sits in an old wallet format called P2PK (Pay-to-Public-Key). That format puts the full public key right on the blockchain the moment coins are received. 

In plain English: modern wallets hide the key behind a second layer of math. Satoshi's don't.

And here's the kicker… 

No software upgrade can fix that retroactively. 

Satoshi himself would need to log in and move those coins to a new quantum-safe wallet. If he's gone (which most people believe), those coins are permanently exposed. 

(A $70B+ honeypot, sitting onchain, waiting.)

There's already a draft proposal from Bitcoin security researcher Jameson Lopp to freeze coins in vulnerable wallet types after a grace period. 

Essentially:

… that would include Satoshi's stash and challenge Bitcoin's core principle that private keys = ownership. 

(As you can imagine, that debate is... heated.)

The broader point we’re trying to drive home with all of this is:

Before this paper, the quantum threat felt like something for the next generation to worry about. The kind of thing you wave off at dinner parties.

But now, Google's own internal roadmap targets useful quantum systems by 2029. 

… ok, so how worried should we be?

While this is a real risk, it’s not an imminent one. No quantum computer exists today that can do this. We likely still have years. 

And fixes do exist:

Our guess at how it all shakes out? 

This forces the industry to upgrade its armor now - while there's still time.

As a result, crypto gets stronger.

THIS WEEK ON MILK ROAD 🥛 

📆 April 1 at 10:00 a.m. ET.

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