According to Alice & Bob, a quantum computer capable of running Shor’s algorithm against the cryptography used by Bitcoin and Ethereum would require only 29,588 physical qubits, compared with fewer than 500,000 in the Google Quantum AI estimate. This projection relies on “cat” qubits that reduce hardware errors, although the estimated execution time would increase to 61.8 minutes, compared with 9 minutes in Google’s estimate. For RSA-2048, Alice & Bob estimates that 22,593 physical qubits could break the key in slightly more than three days, requiring 40 times less hardware than Craig Gidney’s 2025 estimate. The researchers therefore urge users to transfer the approximately 7 million BTC held in addresses with already exposed public keys before this scenario becomes feasible in the early 2030s.
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