Google's new "Willow" quantum computing chip

Although still a while away, quantum computers appear to have taken a big step forward with the announcement of this chip. It's able to perform benchmark computations, which modern supercomputers would take 10 Septillion years to complete (that's 10,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000 years, or roughly 700,000,000,000,000 times longer than the age of the universe), in less than five minutes.  This is a huge game changer, not only in traditional computing and true AI development, but also could devastate cryptocurrencies - breaking the codes, and therefore grabbing the money, in less time than it takes to verify a transaction.  So, even if your wallet is secured offline, it would still be vulnerable every time you made a transaction.  It would also have the potential to suck up the 2.1 million remaining unmined Bitcoins in a few minutes.

"For example, they could decrypt the private key from a public key, enabling bad actors to control, and ultimately access, others’ cryptocurrencies. This potential to break encryption and disrupt security is what makes quantum computing a potential threat to cryptocurrencies".

Is quantum computing a threat for crypto? | Coinbase

Might be time for a new computer soon.

Watch Google's Quantum AI director of hardware, Julian Kelly, show off Google's new Quantum Computing Chip capabilities, performing a standard benchmark computation in less than 5 minutes that would take modern supercomputers 10 septillion years to complete.