Breaking elliptic curve crypto may need 20x fewer qubits than thought

Claim

Google Quantum AI demonstrated that breaking the elliptic curve cryptography protecting most major cryptocurrencies could require fewer than 500,000 physical qubits, a twentyfold reduction from prior estimates.

Reported metric: <500,000 qubits

Reporting date: 2026-04-01 (not necessarily the event date)

Sources

Attribution and reporting linked by this record; links do not imply independent verification.

• Welcome to April 1, 2026 (theinnermostloop.substack.com)