Google Quantum AI announced on October 15 in the Science journal a major breakthrough with its Willow chip, using a technique called magic state cultivation. This method reduces errors by approximately 40 times on one of the most costly resources in quantum computing, achieving a record fidelity of 99.99 % on 54 qubits. The success rate remains low: roughly 8 % per attempt, with nine out of ten trials failing. In March, Google estimated that breaking Bitcoin’s elliptic curve would require fewer than 500,000 physical qubits, a threshold progressively approaching demonstrated laboratory capabilities. NIST plans to deprecate vulnerable algorithms after 2030 and ban them after 2035, while proposals BIP-360 and BIP-361 advance at Bitcoin’s consensus pace.
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