Nobel Prize in Physics laureate warns: quantum computing could crack Bitcoin private keys within minutes

Gate News message, April 7, 2025, Nobel Prize in Physics winner John Martinis, former Google quantum hardware lead, warned that Bitcoin could become one of the first realistic targets of quantum computing attacks. He said that recent Google research shows that advanced quantum computers may be able to derive Bitcoin private keys within minutes, significantly lowering the computational security barriers the network currently relies on. Because Bitcoin depends on elliptic-curve cryptography, and because network upgrades are slow and decentralized, this makes the quantum threat harder to address than in traditional financial systems. The public-key exposure window when Bitcoin transactions are broadcast could be exploited by quantum computers to intercept funds before the transaction is ultimately confirmed. John Martinis emphasized that although building such quantum computers is still an extremely challenging engineering task, the community cannot afford to be complacent, and he suggested planning quantum-resilient upgrades as early as possible, with related threats expected to become increasingly apparent within 5 to 10 years.