AI Just Cut the Cost of Cracking Bitcoin’s Encryption in Half. Is Q-Day Getting Closer?

A new cryptography paper just slashed the estimated cost of one critical step in a quantum attack on Bitcoin, and it happened in roughly two months. The researchers behind it are now asking whether the industry's Q-Day timelines need to…

Bitcoin (CRYPTO: BTC) is trading around $79,000, but the more important number for Bitcoin’s long-term future may have nothing to do with its price. A new cryptography paper has cut the estimated cost of one key step in a future attack on Bitcoin’s encryption by roughly 50% compared with Google Quantum AI’s March benchmark.

That does not mean someone is about to hack Bitcoin. The quantum computers needed to run the attack do not exist yet. But the result shows how quickly the estimates can change as researchers find more efficient ways to build the circuits needed to crack Bitcoin’s cryptography.

The paper, posted to arXiv on September 9, comes just months after Google’s benchmark and is already forcing some researchers to rethink how long Bitcoin has before quantum computers become a serious threat. The Head of Product Growth at StarkWare has argued that the industry should revisit its Q-Day estimates, because improvements like this can shorten the runway faster than expected. So does a 50% cut in two months move Q-Day closer?