I just read something that really caught my attention about the quantum threat. Researchers from Caltech and Oratomic have just published a study that seriously questions the timeline we thought we had before quantum computers become a real threat to our cryptos.

So here’s what’s crazy: they estimate that with only 10,000 physical qubits, it could decrypt the cryptography protecting your Bitcoin and Ethereum wallets. That’s well below what we previously estimated, where we talked about several hundred thousand qubits. Earlier calculations showed it would take about 1 billion qubits in 2012, and now we’re talking about 10,000. That’s a massive compression over two decades.

To be more precise, with about 26,000 qubits in a neutral atom configuration, the quantum computer could crack ECC-256 in about 10 days. That’s the standard securing Bitcoin and Ethereum. For RSA-2048, it’s more complicated; it would require around 102,000 qubits and three months. But clearly, ECC-256 is more vulnerable because it offers comparable security with smaller keys.

What makes this even more urgent is that Google Quantum AI also published a white paper setting the threshold at fewer than 500,000 qubits. Together, these two studies send a pretty clear alarm signal. Oratomic’s team uses Google’s quantum circuits and shows that a neutral atom approach could do the job with about 50 times fewer qubits than Google estimated.

Current prices are around $72,840 for BTC and about $2,240 for ETH. But what really worries me is that approximately 6.9 million BTC are already vulnerable, linked to old wallets and reused addresses. If someone manages to build this quantum computer earlier than expected, these funds are truly at risk.

The real question now is: can the crypto industry migrate to quantum-resistant systems before it becomes a real threat? Because the costs to launch a quantum attack are constantly decreasing in theory. We’re no longer talking about if, but when.

I should mention that the authors of Oratomic have obvious conflicts of interest; nine authors are shareholders of the startup, six of whom are employees. So it’s both a scientific result and a roadmap for their hardware approach. But hey, the figures they present are based on Google’s circuits, so it’s not just marketing.

The reality becomes impossible to ignore: the question is no longer whether quantum computers can break cryptography, but whether the industry can adapt its systems before it’s too late.