Quantum Computing Threat to Bitcoin? Cooke Says ’Not So Fast’ in 2025

Quantum Hype Meets Crypto Reality

As quantum computing advances spark doomsday predictions for Bitcoin, industry expert Cooke delivers a cold dose of truth: blockchain's armor holds. The cryptographic foundations underpinning Bitcoin—long theorized to crumble under quantum brute force—are proving more resilient than Wall Street's latest NFT portfolio.

Why Quantum Fears Are Overblown

Today's quantum systems remain years away from cracking SHA-256 encryption, with post-quantum cryptography already in development. Meanwhile, Bitcoin's decentralized network continues outpacing centralized financial systems in both security and adoption—leaving traditional banks scrambling to keep up with open-source innovation.

The Bottom Line

While quantum computing will undoubtedly disrupt legacy systems, Bitcoin's adaptive nature and developer community position it to evolve faster than the threats. As Cooke bluntly puts it: 'The real vulnerability isn't in the code—it's in trusting 20th-century financial institutions to survive the 21st.'

In brief

• Recent advances by Microsoft, Google, and IBM in quantum computing revive fears of Bitcoin private key hacking.
• The quantified arguments of Graham Cooke, former Google executive, demonstrating the extreme robustness of Bitcoin seed phrases.
• Despite these advances, the threat of a quantum computer capable of breaking Bitcoin cryptography remains purely theoretical.
• Future prospects, including the possible adoption of post-quantum algorithms by the crypto community.

A Google veteran reassures

While many investors wonder if their bitcoins are threatened by the quantum computer, in a message posted on social media, Graham Cooke wanted to reassure bitcoin holders : “the mathematics that protect your wallet are stronger than the very fabric of space-time”. According to him, the cryptographic strength of the Bitcoin protocol is widely underestimated.

Microsoft built a 1-million-qubit quantum computer.

Bitcoin holders are panicking—this could crack crypto encryption.

But your seed phrase has 340,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000 combinations.

Here's why quantum still can't touch it: pic.twitter.com/kiI5oIXej1

He illustrates this strength with precise numbers :

• A 24-word mnemonic phrase contains 340 septillion trillion times more combinations than a 12-word phrase ;

• Even with 8 billion people, each equipped with a billion supercomputers, themselves testing a billion combinations per second, it would take more than 10^40 years to find the correct combination ;

• This duration far exceeds the age of the universe, estimated at 14 billion years.

These figures aim to put the advances of quantum computing into a realistic perspective. Cooke emphasizes that the cryptography used by bitcoin is not merely solid : it is mathematically out of reach for any currently conceivable computing system, thus dispelling some of the panic born from recent announcements.

A still largely theoretical threat to bitcoin

Cooke also recalls that despite rapid progress, quantum computers face major technical obstacles. Classical qubits easily lose their quantum state at the slightest disturbance, making calculations unstable.

It is precisely here that Microsoft’s novelty comes in: its Majorana1 chip exploits “topological conductors” which give qubits unprecedented stability, compared by Cooke to “knots in a rubber band: you can stretch or twist them, but the knot stays in place”.

This advancement reveals the possibility of more powerful machines, but is not enough to bridge the technological gap separating theory from the capacity to break bitcoin.

In practice, even with a more stable architecture, reaching sufficient computing power to attack the network WOULD require not only millions of functional qubits but also solving colossal energy and software constraints.

The developments by Google (Willow) and IBM (Blue Jay) illustrate the race for power but do not change the balance of forces in the short term.

While the debate on bitcoin’s resistance to quantum attacks remains open, Graham Cooke’s remarks put the threat in a measured framework. Quantum computing is advancing, but current cryptography maintains a considerable lead. The future may see the adoption of “post-quantum” algorithms as a precaution, but for now, no concrete sign suggests Bitcoin wallets are vulnerable. In this constantly evolving field, who could then save the crypto ecosystem from the quantum threat?

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