New IonQ paper shows that wallets could be broken with only 20,000 trapped ion qubits, projected to be achieved before 2030

A new paper from IonQ shows that their trapped-ion quantum architecture can be optimized to run Shor's algorithm against 256-bit ECDSA signatures (which underlie most cryptocurrencies) with only 20,000 qubits in less than a month.

Part of it is algorithmic improvements (more efficient circuit to run the algorithm) but most of the significant drop in the qubit estimate comes from their new architecture, which requires only approximately 5 physical qubits per error-corrected logical qubit.

They are expected to release a 10,000-qubit trapped-ion quantum computer next year, with a 20,000 one coming before 2030. This is moving the timeframe forward by a significant amount...

The actual paper with the technical details is linked from this article. I tried to link the paper directly but it was flagged as an URL shortener falsely.

https://www.ionq.com/resources/ionqs-fully-compiled-end-to-end-resource-estimate-for-breaking-256-bit-elliptic-curve-signatures