Quantum Tinker

March 31, 2026 ·

More crypto talk today. While describing my origin-story yesterday, among other times, I keep using the word tinker. Tinker this, tinker that. Sounds je ne sais quoi. What does it really mean to tinker? So I thought I will live blog today's tinker. It's about skimming quantum computing stuff. Key word: skim, more on which in a second. Two new papers came out describing methodologies and timelines on quantum computers breaking status quo cryptography. Sounds all Imitation-Game-esque; great film by the way. But the main tinker question we are answering today: what am I to make of this news in particular, and quantum computing's security threat to crypto in general?

Ethereum researcher Justin Drake, a late-stage author to the Google paper, shares his thoughts above. And I will paste relevant websites and papers below:

research.google

Safeguarding cryptocurrency by disclosing quantum vulnerabilities responsibly

arxiv.org

Shor's algorithm is possible with as few as 10,000 reconfigurable atomic qubits

Quantum computers have the potential to perform computational tasks beyond the reach of classical machines. A prominent example is Shor's algorithm for integer factorization and discrete logarithms, which is of both fundamental importance and practical relevance to cryptograp…

Don't let me hide from it: I don't have much idea what these papers mean! That's entirely what the tinker is about in the first place. If I already knew, there would be no tinker. So the game is to go from not knowing anything, to knowing something useful about the situation in particular, and takeaways for later use in general.

I mentioned the key as skimming because the expectation and desire of becoming an overnight expert at quantum physics and computation is seductive. It's a bit embarrassing to admit and say one doesn't fully understand or know what's going on. The more usual and commonplace persona is that of an expert explaining what's going on, not be the person scratching their head not knowing what to think. But that's exactly where the skimming tinker comes in. I lean into the uncomfortable, admit that I don't fully grasp it, and try to go n+1 on my ignorance.

So far my learning is that big fancy quantum computers can eventually break cryptography, and papers like these conjecture the timelines moving leftward; either because of more efficient computation or more efficient methodology. So the day it all becomes possible, q-day as Justin Drake puts it, is tentatively estimated to be in 2029 now. Back to the main tinker question: so what?

A meaningful distinction to make is between individual time-series and the ensemble over time. In other words, what does this mean to me personally as just one individual player concerned with himself, and what does it mean for the group, the ensemble, all players in combination? It's increasingly clear that the quantum threat to crypto is real. What does it do to the technology, the market, the ensemble...and what does it do to my personal portfolio, my personal risk profile, my personal ability to sleep at night? Uncomfortable and uncertain, these questions. Without clear answers, might I add. But that's what one must get used to while tinkering.

The tinker takeaway: you don't always have to be the one to immediately fight and defeat the beast, knowing it exists and keeping safe distance from it is a great first step.