Google Quantum AI has cut a critical class of quantum computing errors roughly 40-fold on its Willow chip, according to a new paper published in Science. The advance, announced eight days after an Ethereum researcher urged large holders to move their coins, marks meaningful progress toward fault-tolerant quantum machines — though Bitcoin's cryptography remains far out of reach for today's hardware.

The technique attacks what may be quantum computing's single biggest tax: producing the clean, single-use resources that certain operations require, which by some estimates consumes up to 95% of a machine's capacity. Rather than building dedicated qubit factories to purify those resources, Google filters them. A rough state is injected, run through a gauntlet of checks, and the 92% that fail are discarded. What survives reaches 99.99% fidelity.

Nobody is draining wallets with this. Breaking an RSA-2048 key requires error rates around one in 10 billion — roughly a million times cleaner than what Google just demonstrated. Qubit counts and error rates are separate hurdles, and a machine able to break today's cryptography would need to clear both at once.

But researchers are watching the trajectory closely. In 2019, cracking RSA-2048 was estimated to require 20 million noisy qubits. By 2025, that estimate had fallen to under one million. A March 2026 Google whitepaper put Bitcoin's elliptic curve cryptography at under 500,000 physical qubits. Willow has 105 — a shortfall of several thousand-fold against that estimate.

The irony of the week is that Ethereum researcher Justin Drake's stated fear was not quantum at all. He believes AI-driven mathematics breaks elliptic curves first, on ordinary hardware, in "months, not years." His advice: big holders should move funds to fresh addresses that have never signed a transaction, because signing exposes the public key. Crypto is therefore facing potential on two fronts — quantum advancement and AI advancement.

Key players are already making moves. Coinbase spent the week arguing that migration has to start now. Sui is already running quantum-safe transactions on a test network, and Ethereum, Zcash and Near all have plans to become quantum-resistant. The Google result served as a reminder that the clock is indeed ticking. The next marker to watch: whether those plans harden into deployed quantum-resistant upgrades, and on what timeline.

This item was featured in Decrypt's Morning Minute newsletter, written by Tyler Warner. The analysis and opinions expressed are his own and do not necessarily reflect those of Decrypt.

Markets

Crypto majors rebounded Thursday after a morning selloff. Bitcoin rose 1% to $82,700, Ethereum gained 4% to $2,480, Solana added 4% to $107, HYPE climbed 2% to $82 and ZEC jumped 12% to $1,240.

Top altcoin movers included TIA (+27%), INJ (+27%), ZRO (+22%) and NEAR (+15%). Meme coin leaders were up 2-5%: DOGE +3%, SHIB +4%, PEPE +4%, PENGU +4%, TRUMP +4%, SPX -1% and BONK +4%.

Oil rose 2% to $97.50 and gold gained 0.8% to $4,200. Stock futures were slightly green despite hot CPI and PPI readings this week, with the Dow up 0.4% and the Nasdaq down 0.05%.

Policy and Regulation

MSCI finalized new index rules for non-operating companies that put Strategy at risk of removal from its global indexes, with the final list of affected companies due November 11. MSTR fell 3% on the news.

The White House has no crypto lead for the first time since Trump took office, after adviser Patrick Witt announced his departure for the private sector.

Russia is banning peer-to-peer crypto trading from July 1, 2027, under updated Bank of Russia guidance that forces all trades through licensed brokers or registered exchanges.

Companies and Products

Binance US is attempting to raise up to $100 million at a $1 billion valuation — down 78% from the $4.5 billion it commanded in 2022, before its parent's settlement with U.S. authorities gutted its market share.

Mastercard launched its Global Money Platform, built on BVNK, the crypto firm it bought for roughly $1.8 billion in August. The platform gives banks and fintechs a single account that holds both fiat and stablecoins, with API-based conversion between them.

Ledger unveiled the Atom, a touchscreen Android device it calls a "signer" rather than a wallet. The device runs Ledger OS on a secure chip isolated from Android and includes a hardware switch that physically cuts the camera and microphone.

Data Points

Solana has increased its real-world asset (RWA) market share from 4.5% to 26% over the past year, according to a report from Castle Labs.

The United States turned into a net importer of bitcoin for the first time since 2022, per a Chainalysis report pointing to institutions buying more than retail is selling.

Bitwise CIO Matt Hougan argued that bitcoin wins whether the AI trade booms or busts, making the case that AI-driven abundance bids up scarce assets, that an AI-led recession triggers the money printing bitcoin "was built for," and that a muddle-through scenario still delivers ETF and treasury inflows.

Bitcoin ETFs saw $5 million in net inflows on Thursday, while Ethereum ETFs recorded $60 million in outflows.

Meme Coins and Robinhood Chain

On the Robinhood chain, leaders were green up 10-20%: PONS +9% to $226 million, AI +20% at $107 million and Cashcat +15% at $115 million, with HOOKR +30%, Orbio +25% and MEME +30% leading top movers. Solana's top movers included FTR +2,000%, 1 +3,000%, Dacity +1,200% and Bubble +1,800%.

Tokens and Protocols

Papertrade led on-chain protocols in revenue with $5.98 million on Thursday, followed by Hyperliquid at $3.46 million and Pump.fun at $2.08 million.

Pump.fun's Custom Pairs feature has quietly pulled roughly $5.9 million of PUMP out of circulation since launching last month, about 0.33% of the float — the circulating supply available to trade.

Jupiter rolled out its own Papertrade-like product, offering 1,000x leverage on crypto majors, and recorded $1 billion in volume on its first day.

NFTs

NFT leaders were mostly flat: Punks even at 31 ETH, BAYC -1% at 5.4 ETH and Pudgy even at 2.42 ETH. Yield Field Deeds (+14%), Argonauts (+12%) and OTC Desks (+75%) led top movers.