Google’s Willow Cuts Quantum Magic-State Errors 40-Fold, but Bitcoin Attack Costs Are Not Cut 40x

Google’s Willow quantum chip has reduced errors roughly 40-fold when preparing magic states, special quantum states that calculations consume as they run, CoinDesk reported in October. The work was published in Science. Google’s method, called cultivation, starts with a rough state, checks it for errors and discards flawed attempts. States that passed had fidelity of about 99.99%, but only about 8% of attempts survived. Google says more work is needed on scaling the process, real-time operation and moving states into stronger error-correcting setups.

CoinDesk stressed that the result does not make an attack on Bitcoin 40 times cheaper. It addresses one hardware bottleneck, the supply of magic states. In March, Google estimated that a future superconducting machine with fewer than 500,000 physical qubits could break the cryptography used by Bitcoin and Ethereum wallets under specific assumptions, and that estimate already assumed efficient magic-state production.

The concern for older coins is that some of Bitcoin’s earliest holdings have had public keys exposed since they were mined, and lost keys mean owners cannot move them to stronger protections. CoinDesk noted a dormant 100.02 BTC stash from July 2010 moved on October 7, but said such transfers do not prove holders are reacting to quantum fears, since they may reflect wallet changes or sales. No one has demonstrated a quantum break of Bitcoin’s signatures.

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Sources:

• CoinDesk: Satoshi-era bitcoin faces a bigger quantum threat after Google’s new Willow breakthrough