Google quantum computing paper says Ethereum is at risk; media reported it as Bitcoin.

$1 BITCOIN · # ETHEREUM · # QUANTUM

The white paper specifically calls out an Ethereum protocol vulnerability, while the headlines are all about “Bitcoin going to zero” —

This isn’t a technical problem. It’s a traffic problem.

We brought in a former Google quantum AI researcher and a Bitcoin Core contributor. In Palo Alto, we’ll take this paper apart and see what the media actually missed.

Alan Walker (Silicon Valley investor) ·

Tony Liu (former Google quantum AI researcher) ·

Aaron Chang (Bitcoin Core contributor)

// 4/3/2026 · UNIVERSITY AVE, PALO ALTO · 10:52 AM Tony just finished a group meeting at the Google campus and hasn’t even taken his jacket off yet. Aaron is staring at his phone screen — a certain financial media outlet push notification: “Bitcoin 2029 zeroing-out countdown.” Alan took one look, slid his coffee cup to the center of the table, and said: All right, you two explain it clearly to me today, whether this is really a wolf — and where the media is lying.

01 First, that “nine minutes”

Alan Walker:

Tony, give me the most basic number first: how many qubits does Google’s best quantum chip have right now?

Tony Liu · former Google quantum AI researcher:

The Willow chip has 105 physical qubits.

The paper itself has a very high quality of reasoning; led by Babbush and Neven, it does push forward the boundary of resource estimation in technical terms.

Alan Walker:

So how many does the white paper say it takes to crack Bitcoin?

Tony Liu · former Google quantum AI researcher:

At the most optimistic estimate, under a superconducting architecture, at least 500k physical qubits.

And this is still assuming the premise that quantum error correction has been solved perfectly.

Alan Walker:

So even Google’s most advanced chip is about nearly 5,000 times short of the threshold required by the paper.

It’s like I have a bicycle. I published a paper saying that if a perfect airplane existed, it could travel from Beijing to Shanghai in nine minutes— and then the media headline writes, “Nine minutes Beijing to Shanghai becomes real” — No one asks where that airplane is.

Aaron Chang· Bitcoin Core contributor:

And there’s one more layer: those 500k qubits are the number required after assuming perfect error correction.

With superconducting qubits having an error rate of 10⁻³, constructing a reliable logical qubit would consume about 1000 physical qubits for error correction.

This is an engineering problem; the paper doesn’t solve it, it just assumes it has already been solved.

02 The other half the media missed: who the white paper really names

Alan Walker:

I went through the white paper.

There’s one detail that every report left out — the paper’s specific concerns about Ethereum are far more severe than its concerns about Bitcoin.

Aaron, you take this part—this is the area you’re most familiar with.

Aaron Chang· Bitcoin Core contributor:

Yes, this is the most overlooked part of the white paper. Let’s start with the attack window ——

The logic of “attacks at time of use”:

An attacker must complete the quantum cracking and broadcast a forged transaction before your transaction is confirmed.

Bitcoin finds blocks in 10 minutes, which is the maximum window. Ethereum in 12 seconds, Solana in 400 milliseconds.

If a quantum machine can really complete the cracking within nine minutes, that’s a huge challenge for Ethereum and essentially a physically impossible task for Solana.

Bitcoin, because its block time is the longest, is the most “quantum-resistant” of the three.

Tony Liu · former Google quantum AI researcher:

And there’s also a difference in the account model.

In Bitcoin, the P2PKH address does not expose the public key when it has never sent a transaction — the attacker doesn’t even have a starting point for the computation.

In Ethereum’s account model, the public key is publicly available long-term, giving attackers plenty of time for offline computation.

Alan Walker:

Is that all? The places where the white paper calls out Ethereum can’t be only these, right?

Aaron Chang· Bitcoin Core contributor:

The white paper also specifically mentions two Ethereum-specific risks:

First, the data availability sampling mechanism (DAS) —

a core component of Ethereum’s scaling roadmap. The white paper believes it has a “setup-phase attack” vulnerability, where an attacker could pre-generate a reusable backdoor.

Second, privacy protocols like Tornado Cash — also listed as high-risk targets for a setup-phase attack.

These two risks have nothing to do with Bitcoin at all.

Alan Walker:

So the white paper’s conclusion is actually:

Bitcoin — long block times, public keys not exposed long-term, a simpler protocol, relatively the safest.

Ethereum — public keys exposed in the account model, DAS has a protocol-level vulnerability, and risks are higher.

But the headline is “Bitcoin is finished.”

This isn’t a technical problem; it’s a traffic problem.

Bitcoin has the largest market cap and the biggest name, so it gets the headline. There’s no relation whatsoever to whose risk is higher.

03 Bitcoin isn’t a dead target

Alan Walker:

Even if the hardware gap is real, that gap is shrinking.

Is the Bitcoin community seriously responding? Or is everyone just pretending to sleep?

Aaron Chang· Bitcoin Core contributor:

Nobody’s pretending to sleep.

After NIST standardized post-quantum cryptography algorithms in 2024 —

CRYSTALS-Kyber and CRYSTALS-Dilithium.

In Bitcoin Core, BIP drafts for post-quantum signature schemes are also moving forward. It’s just that there’s no traffic, so the media doesn’t cover it.

Alan Walker:

The truly dangerous scenario is: “a quantum computer suddenly meets the target without anyone noticing.”

Tony, is this scenario realistic?

Tony Liu · former Google quantum AI researcher:

It’s basically not realistic.

Every breakthrough in quantum computing is highly public — papers, press conferences, global media.

No institution can silently build a machine with 500,000 qubits and have the entire world not notice.

Signals always arrive before threats.

Alan Walker:

That also explains why the paper’s author, Justin Drake, said “at least a 10% probability from 2032 to break it,” instead of “it will definitely be broken.”

A 10% tail risk gets translated by the media into a guaranteed apocalypse.

This is information distortion, not a technical conclusion.

“My confidence in achieving quantum computing by 2032 has significantly increased, and the quantum computer by then will have at least a 10% probability of recovering the private key from leaked public keys.”

— Justin Drake, Ethereum Foundation, co-author of the white paper, published on X

04 Why did Google publish this paper

Alan Walker:

On the day the paper was released, Alphabet was up 5%, and quantum computing stocks surged across the board.

Is this paper an academic contribution, or a deliberately designed market event?

Tony Liu · former Google quantum AI researcher:

I don’t question the scientific value of the paper.

But there’s one thing worth noting:

Before publishing, they “communicated with the U.S. government” — which is extremely rare for academic papers.

Google knows this is not just an academic paper.

Alan Walker:

The benefit chain is very clear: quantum hardware companies, post-quantum cryptography solution providers, migration consulting firms, and Alphabet itself.

Reports from stakeholders will always tend to amplify threats and shrink thresholds.

This is normal. But you need to know that this filter exists.

Aaron Chang· Bitcoin Core contributor:

From the perspective of the Bitcoin community, this paper is actually a valuable input —

it gives us a clearer timeline framework to prioritize post-quantum upgrades.

Panic will fade, but technical problems are real; the preparations that need to be made should still be made.

05 Where did the Ethereum community go

Alan Walker:

I noticed a very absurd detail:

One of the co-authors of the white paper is Justin Drake — a person at the Ethereum Foundation.

He participated in writing a paper pointing out that Ethereum has quantum vulnerabilities.

So what was the Ethereum community’s reaction? Basically silence.

The reaction from external media was: Bitcoin is done.

The information dissemination path itself is the most absurd part of this whole fiasco.

Aaron Chang· Bitcoin Core contributor:

Within the Ethereum community, there’s actually tension, it’s just that it didn’t blow up into external media.

The quantum vulnerability in the DAS mechanism is not a small issue — it’s core infrastructure in Ethereum’s scaling roadmap, and fixing it would牽 one involves the whole system.

Ethereum’s post-quantum migration is about one order of magnitude more complex than Bitcoin’s:

smart contracts, account abstraction, and all kinds of Layer 2 need coordination. This isn’t a problem that can be solved just by swapping signature algorithms.

Tony Liu · former Google quantum AI researcher:

From an engineering perspective, this is straightforward: Bitcoin’s protocol is extremely simple, and swapping signature algorithms is relatively direct.

Ethereum is a complex state machine. Post-quantum migration requires the entire ecosystem to synchronize and upgrade.

These are two entirely different levels of engineering difficulty.

Alan Walker:

So the full story is like this:

Ethereum Foundation researchers wrote a paper pointing out that Ethereum’s quantum vulnerabilities are more severe than Bitcoin’s.

The Ethereum community knows about it and discusses response plans internally.

The media glanced at it and wrote, “Bitcoin is finished.”

Retail investors looked to the media and panicked, selling Bitcoin.

Information gets simplified, distorted, and simplified again at every propagation node.

By the time it reaches the push notification on your phone screen, it has almost nothing to do with the actual contents of that 57-page paper.

06 Are quantum computing stocks worth following

Alan Walker:

The last question the average investor cares about:

QBTS, IONQ, RGTI are surging across the board because of this paper.

Is this kind of行情 worth chasing?

Tony Liu · former Google quantum AI researcher:

In terms of technical relevance, these three companies are very different.

IonQ uses the ion-trap route, DWave does annealing, and Rigetti does superconducting.

The white paper’s attack model is based on a superconducting architecture. The most direct technical relevance is Rigetti, but Rigetti’s commercialization progress is the weakest among the three, and its market cap is also the smallest.

IONQ has the largest market cap, but its technical route is actually the least directly linked to this paper.

This is a sentiment-driven market, not a fundamentals-driven one.

Aaron Chang· Bitcoin Core contributor:

I’m more focused on another benefit chain:

The NIST standardization of post-quantum cryptography is already complete; now it’s the eve of large-scale commercial migration.

Every large financial institution, every government system, every cloud service provider — all need to do post-quantum migration assessments and implementation.

This market is more certain than quantum hardware itself —

the time window is now, not in 2030.

Alan Walker:

My view is to separate these two things completely:

When quantum computing hardware can meet the target is a highly uncertain decade-plus question. In the short term, the portion boosted by the paper will likely pull back.

Whether the post-quantum cryptography migration will happen is a deterministic present-ongoing matter: the standard has been set, and every system must swap. The service and software opportunities here are far more real than chasing high quantum hardware stocks.

Don’t mix up “quantum computers are coming” with “post-quantum cryptography migration has already started,”

these are two different investment theses, and the time scales differ by at least a decade.

Addendum · Review of Bitcoin’s past “doomsday predictions”

Year

Doomsday prediction

Actual result

⚠ A risk you should truly be wary of

A real risk underestimated in the white paper:

In early Bitcoin, P2PK format was used, with the public key directly exposed on-chain.

The dormant addresses from the Satoshi era face a greater risk than ordinary addresses when quantum computers truly mature.

This is a policy issue that needs serious discussion —

but it’s completely different from the idea of the “entire Bitcoin market going to zero.”

07 Alan’s conclusion: the 57-page paper becomes a push notification, and every step is lying

This Google white paper is serious academic work, and the paper team didn’t lie.

But the systemic risks it truly highlights are Ethereum’s account model, the DAS mechanism, and privacy protocols—not Bitcoin.

Because Bitcoin is the most famous and has the highest market cap, it became a projection screen for all kinds of panic.

The Ethereum Foundation researcher who wrote this paper likely didn’t expect the final public opinion result would be — Bitcoin is finished.

More importantly, you need to distinguish two things:

When quantum computing hardware will reach the target is at least a decade-plus uncertainty problem.

Post-quantum cryptography migration has already started; standards landed in 2024—this is happening now.

The former determines when threats arrive; the latter determines whether your system is already prepared.

Panic mixes these two together, manufacturing a doomsday narrative that’s neither accurate nor useful for action.

A 57-page academic paper, compressed by the media into a push notification, and then forwarded through group chats,

becomes “Bitcoin goes to zero in 2029.”

In that chain of communication, each step loses information, and each step amplifies emotion.

The real risk was never the one written in the paper; it’s the investment decision you made without ever reading the paper, based on a push notification.

This article is for viewpoint exchange and discussion and does not constitute any investment advice.

The characters are fictional, and the dialogue is a literary reenactment.

Technical data sources come from publicly released academic publications (Babbush et al., 2026).