Satoshi-era bitcoin faces a bigger quantum threat after Google’s new Willow breakthrough

Google says its Willow quantum chip has cut errors about 40-fold when preparing special states used in quantum calculations, tackling a costly step toward building machines powerful enough to crack bitcoin wallets.

Spending typically reveals the public key, while some payment types expose it from the start.

Some later payment formats hide the public key behind a hash, a digital fingerprint, until the owner spends.

Those units then need the digital equivalent of fuel to run certain operations, specially prepared quantum states that researchers call “magic states.”

In a quantum computer, hardware devoted to producing magic states is hardware that cannot be assigned to other work.