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429 points AbhishekParmar | 1 comments | | HN request time: 0.257s | source
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Imnimo ◴[] No.45670761[source]
As with any quantum computing news, I will wait for Scott Aaronson to tell me what to think about this.
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lisper ◴[] No.45670978[source]
Why wait? Just go read the paper:

https://www.nature.com/articles/s41586-025-09526-6

In the last sentence of the abstract you will find:

"These results ... indicate a viable path to practical quantum advantage."

And in the conclusions:

"Although the random circuits used in the dynamic learning demonstration remain a toy model for Hamiltonians that are of practical relevance, the scheme is readily applicable to real physical systems."

So the press release is a little over-hyped. But this is real progress nonetheless (assuming the results actually hold up).

[UPDATE] It should be noted that this is still a very long way away from cracking RSA. That requires quantum error correction, which this work doesn't address at all. This work is in a completely different regime of quantum computing, looking for practical applications that use a quantum computer to simulate a physical quantum system faster than a classical computer can. The hardware improvements that produced progress in this area might be applicable to QEC some day, this is not direct progress towards implementing Shor's algorithm at all. So your crypto is still safe for the time being.

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ransom1538 ◴[] No.45671003[source]
SO... BTC goes to zero?
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1. logtrees ◴[] No.45672639[source]
No, I don't think so. By the time quantum supremacy is really achieved for a "Q-Day" that could affect them or things like them, the existing blockchains which have already been getting hardened will have gotten even harder. Quantum computing could be used to further harden them, as well, rather than compromise them. Supposing that Q-Day brought any temporary hurdles to Bitcoin or Ethereum or related blockchains, well...due to their underlying nature resulting in justified Permanence, we would be able to simply reconstitute and redeploy them for their functionalities because they've already been sufficiently imbued with value and institutional interest as well. These are quantum-resistant hardenings.

So I do not think these tools or economic substrate layers are going anywhere. They are very valuable for the particular kinds of applications that can be built with them and also as additional productive layers to the credit and liquidity markets nationally, internationally, and also globally/universally.

So there is a lot of institutional interest, including governance interest, in using them to build better systems. Bitcoin on its own would be reduced in such justification but because of Ethereum's function as an engine which can drive utility, the two together are a formidable and quantum-resistant platform that can scale into the hundreds of trillions of dollars and in Ethereum's case...certainly beyond $1Q in time.

I'm very bullish on the underlying technology, even beyond tokenomics for any particular project. The underlying technologies are powerful protocols that facilitate the development and deployment of Non Zero Sum systems at scale. With Q-Day not expected until end of 2020s or beginning of 2030s, that is a considerable amount of time (in the tech world) to lay the ground work for further hardening and discussions around this.