In case you haven’t heard, Google has just introduced Willow, a new state-of-the-art quantum computing chip with a breakthrough that can reduce errors exponentially as it scales up using more qubits, cracking a 30-year challenge in the field. In benchmark tests, Willow solved a standard computation in <5 mins that would take a current leading supercomputer over 10^25 years, far beyond the age of the universe.
Discussion
Quantum will break encryption. Eventually. But that's ALL encryption. Like the thing that secures all modern digits infrastructure. With Google's announcement, people got spooked. It's still a long way from breaking SHA256 based encryption though. Specifically, it breaks the Discreet Log Problem. Which just means to reverse encryption requires brute force guessing of unfathomable proportion.
Source please. How was this done
People believe in everything these days.
Could bitcoin adopt a new cryptographic hash function compatible with quantum computing?
I’m not sure about hash function, but addresses can be improved. It’s an interesting problem that requires a lot of thought and planning. James Lopp does a nice presentation on this if you haven’t seen it:
whats the impact going to be?
Interesting but I guess far from market maturity.