Caltech: Quantum Computers Need Just 10,000 Qubits to Break Most Secure Encryption — Down from Millions

r/singularity / Caltech·medium signal

A Caltech/Oratomic research team found quantum computers could break RSA-2048 with ~26,000 qubits in 7 months, and ECC-256 (Bitcoin/Ethereum encryption) with ~10,000 qubits in 10 days. This is five orders of magnitude below the 1 billion qubits estimated in 2012, driven by quantum error correction breakthroughs and neutral-atom quantum computer improvements. 285 upvotes with 90 comments on r/singularity.