The widely shared online claim—“Google research shows that a quantum computer can crack a Bitcoin private key in just 9 minutes”—does not exist at all in any credible academic or official source. The Deep-Chain investigation found that the “9-minute” figure is very likely a panic narrative stitched together by combining the “5-minute” RCS benchmark test of the Google Willow chip with Bitcoin’s 10-minute block production time—while cracking Bitcoin’s ECDSA actually requires 1.9 billion qubits, roughly 18 million times more than Willow’s 105.
(Background: Google plans to complete its post-quantum cryptography migration by 2029, six years earlier than the government’s target, and the encryption industry must keep up.)
(Additional background: A physics expert: give quantum computers five more years and they’ll break Bitcoin private keys—does upgrading BTC require a full shutdown?)
In recent days, a message presented as “Google research” has been widely reposted across Chinese communities—its origin can be traced to a tweet published on X by the crypto media Cointelegraph, which claimed that quantum computers can crack Bitcoin wallets in just 9 minutes, even faster than block production. The tweet only included an image and cited no research paper or official report.
For this reason, Deep-Chain conducted 6 rounds of cross-verification: in Google’s official blog, the arXiv academic paper repository, and the Nature and Science journals, as well as across all mainstream crypto media, no articles were found that mention “9 minutes to crack Bitcoin.”
To put it plainly first: this is a fabricated piece of misinformation; the “9 minutes” number is made by stitching together some figures that may be similar in approximation.
Breakdown of how the “9 minutes” was put together: two real events mixed together
To understand the generation logic behind this fake message, we first need to recognize two real events.
Event 1: Google Willow’s “5 minutes”
In December 2024, Google released the Willow quantum chip, claiming that in the “random circuit sampling (RCS)” benchmark test, Willow could complete the calculation that a traditional supercomputer would need 10^25 years to run. This is a real and astonishing breakthrough—however, there is a key limitation: RCS is a specific quantum supremacy demonstration algorithm and has nothing to do with cracking cryptography.
For example: your computer can compute 253×847 in 0.1 seconds, but that doesn’t mean it can write a symphony in 0.1 seconds. Willow’s RCS capability cannot be directly converted into the ability to crack ECDSA (the elliptic curve digital signature algorithm used by Bitcoin); these are entirely different problem types.
Event 2: Bitcoin mempool’s “10 minutes”
On average, Bitcoin produces a block every 10 minutes. Researchers have indeed discussed a theoretical attack scenario: if the quantum computer is powerful enough, it could immediately crack private keys within an approximately 10-minute window after a transaction is broadcast and before it is packaged into a block. This is called a “short-range attack” or a “mempool attack.”
The stitching logic: The misinformation maker might calculate it like this—10 minutes (block time) - 1 minute (buffer) = 9 minutes (the fabricated “cracking time”), and then add urgent “urge immediate migration” language that comes from Google’s 2029-and-later post-quantum cryptography migration plan—but intentionally misread it as “there is a threat right now.”
Three real pieces of material, one false conclusion.
What Google actually said (March 2026)
On March 28, 2026, Google announced that it would complete post-quantum cryptography (PQC) migration before 2029—six years earlier than the U.S. federal government’s 2035 goal. Android 17 has begun importing the ML-DSA algorithm.
A Google spokesperson explicitly stated: At least 10 more years are needed before quantum computers can crack RSA-2048.
This is an entire generation’s difference from the claim of “cracking in 9 minutes.”
Numbers don’t lie: why Bitcoin is secure now
How many qubits are needed to break Bitcoin? Let’s use numbers:
ECDSA offline cracking within 1 day: requires 13 million physical qubits. Google Willow currently has 105.
Instant cracking within a 10-minute mempool window: requires 1.9 billion physical qubits—more than 18 million times Willow’s.
Logical qubit requirements: 2,330 to 2,619 logical qubits, and each logical qubit requires thousands of physical qubits to perform error correction. After converting Willow’s 105 physical qubits into logical qubits, even a couple of digits are not reached.
How big is the gap? Even under the most relaxed requirement of “cracking offline within 1 day,” it still needs 13 million qubits—that is about 124,000 times Willow’s current 105. Tether CEO Paolo Ardoino put it plainly:
Quantum computing is still very far from breaking Bitcoin encryption.
The real threat to Bitcoin is here
Debunking does not mean the quantum threat doesn’t exist. The problem is that the form of the threat is completely different from what the misinformation describes.
The real short-term risk: Harvest Now, Decrypt Later
Attackers cannot crack Bitcoin today, but they can collect encrypted data now and decrypt it after quantum computers mature. For Bitcoin, this means that all on-chain public key data is already fully public and permanently stored, so it cannot be “reclaimed.”
Currently, there are roughly 6.8 million BTC (worth about $47 billion) sitting in quantum-vulnerable addresses on-chain, mainly under two situations:
First, P2PK format addresses: the output format used in early Bitcoin, which directly exposes the public key. Most of the approximately 1 million BTC mined by Satoshi Nakamoto belong to this format.
Second, reused P2PKH addresses: every spend transaction exposes the public key. If an address has sent transactions, its public key has been recorded on-chain; theoretically, it can be attacked by quantum computers in the future.
By contrast, addresses that have never sent transactions (with no exposed public key) are safer—quantum computers cannot derive the private key directly from a Bitcoin address (the hash value of the public key), because this involves SHA-256, which is currently believed to be difficult to effectively attack even with quantum computers.
Timeline: where is the Q-Day?
Pierre-Luc Dallaire-Demers, a physicist at the University of Calgary in Canada, has warned that there may be a material threat within five years, but that is a relatively aggressive estimate. Most experts push the “Q-Day” (the day quantum computers can break existing cryptography) to 2035–2040. What Google says itself is also “at least 10 years.”
Defending: the Bitcoin community isn’t waiting to die
Given the foreseeable future threat, the encryption industry has taken concrete actions:
BIP 360 (Pay-to-Tapscript-Hash): officially released in early 2026, introducing post-quantum resistant output types and providing a migration path for Bitcoin’s post-quantum cryptography upgrade. This does not require a full shutdown, but it does require users to actively migrate addresses.
Bitcoin Quantum testnet: a dedicated test network built by BTQ Technologies to validate the feasibility of post-quantum transaction formats.
NIST standardized ML-DSA algorithm: the U.S. National Institute of Standards and Technology has completed post-quantum cryptography standardization; ML-DSA has become an officially recommended algorithm, and Google’s Android 17 has already imported it.
Trezor Safe 7: a hardware wallet provider Trezor has released a new wallet with a “quantum-resistant architecture,” laying groundwork in advance.
CoinShares research’s conclusion matches an industry consensus: the quantum threat to Bitcoin is a “manageable risk”—not something that dies tomorrow, but something to prepare for now.
A simple way to verify whether a message is true or fake
The method of taking a news item and extending it to manufacture discussion is actually very typical: take a few real but not necessarily scientifically related numbers, stitch them together, and add a sense of urgency to “act immediately.” The way to tell is simple: ask “where is the original source?” Google’s quantum breakthroughs would be published in Nature, arXiv, or an official blog with peer review. A stunning claim like “cracking Bitcoin in 9 minutes,” if it were real, would have already been a worldwide headline—not just circulating as screenshots in Chinese communities.
Quantum computers are a real, long-term threat that deserves serious attention. But panic is not preparation, and fake numbers are useless for any real defense. Willow’s 105 qubits are still far from the 1.9 billion threshold, and there are decades of engineering distance as well.
