Can Cloudflare’s Quantum Encryption Push Reach 2029, and Could Bitcoin Face Challenges?

Gate News message: Cloudflare announced it will accelerate the migration to post-quantum encryption, aiming for full coverage by 2029. This move has sparked intense attention from the Bitcoin community regarding quantum security. Currently, two-thirds of the company’s user traffic uses post-quantum encryption, but to respond to rapid breakthroughs in quantum hardware, Cloudflare plans to achieve 100% coverage within three years. Google has also set the same goal and has deployed post-quantum encryption protections in Chrome, Android 17, and Google Cloud. IBM plans to deliver its first fault-tolerant quantum computer, Starling, in 2029, posing new challenges to the security of crypto assets.

In recent months, the quantum computing field has seen multiple breakthroughs. A Google Quantum AI white paper shows that, in theory, fewer than 1,200 logical qubits would be enough to solve Bitcoin’s 256-bit elliptic curve problem, and about 500k physical qubits would be able to achieve it. Oratomic has proposed that the Shor algorithm only needs 10k reconfigurable neutral atom qubits to run at cryptographic scale. The IQM and Fraunhofer FOKUS teams in Germany also, for the first time, compiled the Shor algorithm gate-by-gate at RSA-2048 scale, breaking the previous limitation that depended on theoretical extrapolation.

Could Bitcoin face serious challenges? Chaincode Labs estimates that a complete migration to post-quantum security may take seven years, and that currently the public keys of approximately 1.7 million bitcoins remain permanently exposed. Researcher Justin Drake noted that by 2032, quantum computers may recover private keys from leaked public keys with at least a 10% probability. Given that Bitcoin’s market value is as high as $1.36 trillion and that its software upgrade cycle is measured in years, compared with the pace of quantum computer R&D, the time window is already relatively tight.

This series of developments serves as a warning to the cryptography community: rapid progress in quantum computing may pose a threat to the long-term security of Bitcoin and other digital assets. Investors should closely track advances in post-quantum encryption technology and prepare for potential security upgrades and asset protection in order to address future quantum threats.