EU watchdogs warn quantum computers could pick crypto’s locks

European Union financial supervisors warned Wednesday that advances in quantum computing could threaten the cryptography securing blockchains.

The European Banking Authority, European Insurance and Occupational Pensions Authority and European Securities and Markets Authority said in a joint risk update that quantum computing could undermine systems used to secure transactions, communications and databases.

The warning follows a more detailed assessment from Google Quantum AI. In March, its researchers estimated that breaking the cryptography used by many cryptocurrencies could require about 20 times fewer physical qubits than earlier estimates. A qubit is the basic unit of a quantum computer.

No computer capable of carrying out such an attack exists today.

For cryptocurrency holders, the concern is that a future quantum computer could derive a private key from an exposed public key and use it to authorize transactions.

Bitcoin developer Jameson Lopp and five co-developers in February proposed phasing out the network’s current signatures and restricting how unmigrated funds could be spent five years after the proposal’s activation. The proposal has not been adopted.

The Ethereum Foundation aims to make Ethereum resistant to quantum attacks across its execution, consensus and data layers by December 2029.

Related: StarkWare tests quantum-resistant Bitcoin transaction on mainnet