Debate Over Bitcoin Security as Google Unveils Willow Quantum Chip

Google Chief Executive Office Sundar Pichai has unveiled the Willow Quantum Chip, a milestone invention that can solve computation that would take a classic supercomputer ten septillion years in minutes. The chip has now sparked debate on whether it could destabilize Bitcoin security by cracking its cryptographic algorithms.

According to the announcement in an official blog post, Pichai revealed that the Willow Quantum Chip completed a random circuit sampling in less than five minutes, thereby outperforming the world’s fastest supercomputer by over ten septillion years (10,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000 years). According to Pichai, the chip that was developed at Google’s Santa Barbara facility using superconducting qubits achieved unprecedented error reduction with increasing qubits, making it the first system ever to achieve that “below threshold” for errors.

What did Google’s Quantum AI Lead Say?

Commenting on the development, Google’s Quantum AI Lead Hartmut Neven said the chip had the potential to correct errors and process certain computations at mind-boggling speeds exponentially. He averred that “This mind-boggling number exceeds known timescales in physics and vastly exceeds the age of the universe.”  Going on, he further stated that the development “lends credence to the notion that quantum computation occurs in many parallel universes, in line with the idea that we live in a multiverse, a prediction first made by David Deutsch.”

Neven further stated that another serious feat the group achieved was that the Willow Quantum chip could eliminate errors exponentially since it’s been scaled up using more qubits. As a result, the AI lead suggested that they have finally managed to crack a “key challenge” associated with quantum error correction that professionals in the field had pursued for the last 30 years.  Neven added “Using our latest advances in quantum error correction, we were able to cut the error rate in half. In other words, we achieved an exponential reduction in the error rate.”

Fear that Willow Quantum Chip Could Crack the Bitcoin Algorithm

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To simplify the issue of the Willow quantum chip, you need to understand what qubits are – qubits in quantum computers are designed to outperform regular computers. While the traditional computer would do one calculation at a time, the quantum angle enables the computers to perform many calculations simultaneously. As such, the Willow quantum chip that has 105 cubits could potentially perform all the calculations that 105-bit computers could perform concurrently.

While using such a device would greatly optimize the regular tasks people employ their computers to perform, it becomes astronomically successful in cracking encryption algorithms or passwords, thereby bringing the issue of Bitcoin security to question. Since there are smaller capacity quantum computers that have been used to break encryption algorithms in the past, the crypto community is wondering whether the Willow quantum chip could crack Bitcoin and thereby dent its use and value in the coming days.

Experts State it Could Take a Million Qubits to Crack Bitcoin.

The announcement of the unveiling of the willow quantum chip has once again brought to the fore arguments regarding Bitcoin security in the wake of such developments. For example, while unveiling “The Splurge” last October to strengthen Ethereum against similar threats, Ethereum co-founder Vitalik Buterin joined other prominent commentators who have discussed such a problem before.  Some commentators in Geiger Capital have already declared that “Bitcoin is Dead” because of Willow.

However, to calm the negative voices, user BitcoinAgile was quick to explain that it would require at least a million or so qubits to break Bitcoin’s cryptography, a figure far beyond the 105 qubits in the Willow quantum chip. In the meantime, BitcoinAgile claimed that “the Bitcoin community is already developing quantum-resistant solutions.”  Another user, LionTV, a crypto investor and trader at Bybit, echoed BitcoinAgile’s sentiments, stating that Willow was years away from cracking Bitcoin’s algorithm.

Conclusion

Coming at a time when Bitcoin is set for greater heights, the news about the newly launched willow quantum chip has created a buzz within the crypto community about Bitcoin security. Some experts believe that even if Google went on to exceed their new invention’s expectations, it would take a long time before Willow cracked the Bitcoin algorithm. Experts have claimed that news about a threat to Bitcoin was sheer fear-mongering.

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