U.S. Backs $300M Quantum Hardware Push as Crypto Projects Target 2029 for Quantum Resistance
What happened: The U.
What happened: The U.S. Commerce Department finalized $300 million in CHIPS Act awards—$100 million each to Rigetti, D-Wave, and Quantinuum—to accelerate quantum hardware development. Ethereum has set December 2029 as its target for base-layer quantum resistance, while Bitcoin developers are advancing proposals for a similar migration. D-Wave plans a 100,000-qubit annealing system and a 10,000-qubit gate-model system, while Quantinuum and Rigetti focus on manufacturing and error correction.
Why it matters: The convergence of quantum hardware investment and crypto migration planning reflects growing, though still theoretical, concerns about quantum threats to cryptographic security. While no fault-tolerant quantum computers are expected to threaten Bitcoin or Ethereum before 2029, the risk of stranded or vulnerable assets—especially from unmoved, old wallets—remains a challenge for the ecosystem.
Source: CoinDesk, Quartz, Startup Fortune