For the last few days, away from the normal world, geeks and technologists are debating a warning issued by Google. The company a few days ago said it was pulling the timeline for post-quantum computer world to 2029 and that the world needed to get ready. Earlier the expectations were that the functional and sufficiently powerful quantum computers will only arrive in early or middle of the next decade. Now, the inflection point seems to be just a couple of years away in 2029.
The implications are huge. It is expected that functional quantum computers will break most of the encryption that is used currently in the digital world. This means nothing will be safe or private. Even Bitcoin, which uses encryption to make each coin unique and private, will be worthless. At the same time, encryption used in chat apps, mails, file transfers, even bank and financial transactions, will be crackable with a quantum computer.
“Quantum computers will pose a significant threat to current cryptographic standards, and specifically to encryption and digital signatures,” noted a Google blog a few days ago. “Google’s introducing a 2029 timeline to secure the quantum era with post-quantum cryptography (PQC) migration.”
In simple words it means that Google expects that by 2029, quantum computers will be powerful enough to matter. And that the world will need to move to new cryptography standards to keep things private and secure.
At the same time, in a recent white paper, Google’s quantum research team has warned that future quantum machines could potentially crack the cryptographic systems that protect Bitcoin and other digital assets.
Quantum computers vs Bitcoin
Currently, Bitcoin and other crypto systems rely on elliptic curve cryptography, a complex mathematical problem that would take traditional computers millions of years to solve. However, Google says that once quantum computers reach a functional stage, they will break this code dramatically faster. Say within minutes or hours.
What makes this finding significant is not just the risk itself, but how soon it may arrive. Google is saying 2029 and that is spooking a lot of people.
It is not just Bitcoin. At its core, the arrival of quantum computers will impact digital private keys, the secret codes that give users access to their crypto wallets. Or for that matter the keys that our phones and computers use every time we do something secure, like chatting with someone using an End-2-End encrypted app.
Again, the issue is the same. Cryptography is all about mathematics and encryption is nothing but a mathematical problem that will take millions of years to solve for a computer if the “key” is not available. But quantum computers work differently compared to regular computers. They can process things in millions of different ways at the same time, unlike the regular computers and phones that are linear. This means what takes regular computers years to solve can be done by a quantum computer within seconds or minutes.
The one important part to note here is that currently quantum computers capable of carrying out such calculations are not available. While such systems do exist, they remain in the experimental stage. But now Google is suggesting that quantum computers could reach this tipping point by around 2029. And to stay safe after 2029, Google is suggesting that companies should move towards post-quantum cryptography.
