EU watchdogs warn quantum computers could pick crypto’s locks
EU financial regulators warned that progress in quantum computing could eventually break the cryptography protecting blockchains, threatening transactions, communications, and databases. The concern is that a sufficiently powerful quantum computer could derive a private key from a public key and use it to steal or reroute cryptocurrency funds. Google Quantum AI recently estimated that cracking the cryptography used by many cryptocurrencies may require far fewer physical qubits than previously thought, though no such attack-capable quantum computer exists today. The warning adds urgency to ongoing efforts to make blockchains quantum-resistant. Bitcoin developers have proposed phasing out current signatures and limiting spending of unmigrated funds after a transition period, while the Ethereum Foundation plans to make Ethereum resistant to quantum attacks across execution, consensus, and data layers by December 2029.
