The market appears to be reassessing long‑term technological risks in crypto following Google’s major quantum computing research update on Monday.
While leading coins like bitcoin and ether (ETH) have seen only modest moves in the past 24 hours, several cryptocurrencies tied to the quantum‑resistant narrative have surged sharply, with some gaining more than 50%.
This outperformance of the so-called quantum-resistant tokens shows how quickly the market is pricing in potential technological risks, even if those are still theoretical. While quantum computers capable of attacking Bitcoin are still years away, traders are already signaling an appetite for “future-proof” assets.
Late Monday, Google’s Quantum AI team suggested that quantum computers could break the elliptic‑curve cryptography used by Bitcoin, with fewer than 500,000 quantum qubits, which is significantly less than previously estimated. This prompted some analysts to cite 2029 as a potential deadline for Bitcoin and the broader blockchain ecosystem to strengthen their defenses.
The study said that a sufficiently advanced quantum computer could attack Bitcoin within nine minutes. A separate report highlighted Ethereum’s vulnerabilities, identifying five potential attack vectors that could put an estimated $100 billion of assets at risk, including DeFi and tokenized holdings.
