The Quantum Threat to Bitcoin: How a Powerful Computer Can Steal Your Cryptocurrency in Under 10 Minutes

To understand how a quantum computer can be used to steal bitcoin, it's essential to grasp the basics of bitcoin's encryption and the role of elliptic curve cryptography. Each bitcoin wallet has a private key, a 256-digit binary number, and a public key derived from it using a specific mathematical operation. This one-way function allows for easy verification but makes it virtually impossible for classical computers to reverse-engineer the private key. However, a quantum algorithm known as Shor's algorithm can efficiently solve this problem, potentially breaking the security of bitcoin. The recent paper by Google's Quantum AI division has reduced the estimated number of qubits required to run Shor's algorithm, making the threat more pressing. With the right quantum computer, an attacker could derive a private key from a public key in approximately nine minutes, potentially allowing them to steal bitcoin. The vulnerability is particularly concerning for the 6.9 million bitcoin with exposed public keys, which could be targeted without a time constraint.