Speaker 0:  the math keeping your bank account and bitcoin safe just got a lot easier to break, and the 2030 safety window is slamming shut. new 2026 research proves that quantum computers need 20 times fewer resources than thought to shatter our global encryption standards. quantum encryption doomsday clock has just accelerated. so we've talked about this before, and every time we talk about it, the deadline gets closer and closer. two independent 2026 studies reveal that the elliptical curve cryptography, ecc, the tech securing https, vpns, and blockchains can be broken with a fraction of the previous estimated quantum power. specifically, neutral atom quantum computers could crack ecc two fifty six in just ten days using 30,000 qubits. this effectively forces every major organization to accelerate their post quantum encryption migration by years as harvestnow decrypt later attacks make today's private data a sitting duck for future quantum decryption. what do you think about this, john?

Speaker 1:  yeah. this scares me. so, historically, for rsa twenty forty eight, they suggested it might require millions of physical cubits for ecc two fifty six, where it would also require enormous systems. the new estimates, fewer than 1,500 logical cubits and fewer than 9,000,000 to foley gates, and potentially fewer than 500 physical cubits under certain architectures. that's an enormous reduction compared to earlier assumptions that often projected tens of millions of cubits. and so let's distinct between physical qubits and logical qubits. so physical qubits are the actual hardware qubit in a quantum computer, where logical qubits are the stabilized collections of physical qubits protected by quantum error correction. and so researchers are shrinking the overhead between theory and practical cryptographic attacks. now one of the most important technical developments in all of this involves the neutral atom architectures. so unlike superconducting systems where qubits have limited connectivity, neutral atoms trapped with lasers can be dynamically rearranged, which allows for more flexible entanglement, lower communication overhead, and improved gate efficiencies. and this matters because quantum cryptanalysis is not only about raw cubic counts. it's about connectivity. it's about gate speed and error correction efficiency. so this newer neutral atom architecture, it appears capable of reducing the resource overhead, like you said, by roughly a 100 x. so this is why this research has shocked the cybersecurity community. now, craig, you and i have covered a lot of this in the past. merit? do you think that, we should be more worried now than we should have been when we covered it, say, a few months

Speaker 0:  ago? vitalik buterin thinks it has merit. that's why they've started to change, ethereum. we talked about that a few weeks ago because they wanna get post quantum encryption in. and i think the plan is to have that complete by the end of this year. i am not a 100% sure. my memory is not but think of this, current encryption like a high-tech vault with a trillion combination lock. we always knew a quantum lock picker was being built, but we thought, they need a machine the size of a skyscraper to turn the dial fast enough. this new research just proved that they only need a machine the size of a suitcase to pop the door open in minutes. the bolt hasn't changed, but the thief's tools just got 20 times more efficient. standard nist are now out. full migration, big tech like google and cloudfare is targeted for twenty twenty nine. so they're planning on having their encryption changed, i assume, from ecc to what's the next one? ml, kem, crystal kyber.

Speaker 1:  yeah. crystal kyber, crystal, dilithium, sphinx, falcon or sphinx plus and falcon. yeah.

Speaker 0:  so just to give you an idea, to build and run a 30,000 cubic quantum computer, specifically a neutral atom system like the ones identified in these papers. you aren't buying a computer. you're building a specialized physics laboratory. so the spend would include a quant a qubit array between a 150 and 300,000,000, a laser control systems, 50 between 50 and a 100,000,000, and the facility between 20 and 50,000,000 with total estimates being 220,000,000 to 450,000,000 to build this, 30,000 physical cubit, machine. so it's not like everyday people have the ability to do it, but, nation states do. and we should be thinking about how fast this is gonna change.

Speaker 1:  absolutely. yeah. this is scary, but the good thing is major companies are already migrating. so, but i'm sure there will be some, some stragglers that are gonna get affected by this for sure. 100%.

Speaker 0:  we still haven't reached stable logical qubits at scale. so while the mass says 30,000 qubits is enough, building a 30,000 cubic machine that doesn't leak information due to environmental noise is still a massive engineering hurdle. so keep that in mind. if you handle data that needs to stay secret for ten plus years, you need to start beginning implementing ml, kem, or krystel khyber or some other, protocol this year. the quantum apocalypse isn't a date in the future. it's a data collection race that's happening right now. if you had the choice to move your entire life savings to a quantum safe while today, but it costs you 5% transaction fee to migrate, would you pay it, or would you take the risk? let us know in the chat.