PsiQuantum Breaks Ground on 1M-Qubit Facility in Chicago
Bitcoin's encryption faces renewed scrutiny as PsiQuantum begins construction on a 1 million-qubit quantum computing facility in Chicago, with 10,230 BTC worth ₱42.78 billion ($728.2 million) currently vulnerable to quantum threats.
Key Takeaway
Bitcoin's encryption faces no immediate quantum threat, but the clock started ticking with PsiQuantum's million-qubit build.
PsiQuantum co-founder Peter Shadbolt posted a photo Thursday showing 500 tons of steel erected in six days at the company's Chicago construction site.
The facility will house quantum computers capable of handling 1 million qubits — a scale that dwarfs the 6,100-qubit machine currently operating at the California Institute of Technology. PsiQuantum co-founder Terry Rudolph raised ₱58.75 billion ($1 billion) in September and designed the facility with Nvidia to support what the company called "next-generation AI supercomputers."
The build puts Bitcoin's encryption back in focus. A preprint paper published last month estimated that 100,000 qubits could crack 2048-bit encryption keys, though Bitcoin uses a tougher 256-bit standard. CoinShares research from February identified 10,230 BTC — worth ₱42.78 billion ($728.2 million) at current prices — as quantum-vulnerable because those coins use exposed public keys. Bitcoin's total network value sits at ₱82.25 trillion ($1.4 trillion).
PsiQuantum co-founder Terry Rudolph addressed the threat directly at a Bitcoin summit in July, saying the company has no plans to use quantum computers to derive private keys from public keys, and that hiding such work would be impossible at a company with hundreds of employees. Blockstream CEO Adam Back offered a longer timeline, stating quantum computers won't pose a real threat to Bitcoin for at least a decade.
PsiQuantum manufactures its Omega silicon photonic chipset at GlobalFoundries' Malta, New York fab and has already built thousands of quantum chip wafers, with the company's photonic approach skipping the exotic cryogenic systems used by IBM and Google in favor of modular datacenter-style cooling racks.
This article was written based on reporting from Cointelegraph.
