Can Google’s 13,000× “quantum echoes” put Bitcoin’s keys on a clock?
For decades, physicists have promised that quantum computing would one day outrun classical machines. That day may have arrived.
On Oct. 22, Google’s Willow quantum processor completed a task that supercomputers would need 150 years to finish by compressing centuries of calculation into two hours.
Industry experts say the result, verified by Nature, isn’t only a triumph for science. It’s a tremor through the foundations of digital security, sparking a renewed question in financial circles: how close are we to a future where quantum power can break Bitcoin’s cryptography?
The breakthrough
The breakthrough centers on the Out-of-Time-Order Correlator (OTOC), or “Quantum Echoes,” algorithm.
By running it on 105 physical qubits at 99.9% fidelity, Willow became the first processor to achieve verifiable quantum advantage, proving that a quantum computer can solve a complex physical model faster and more precisely than any classical supercomputer.
In simple terms, Willow didn’t just calculate; it perceived. Its output revealed molecular structures and magnetic interactions that were mathematically invisible to traditional systems. The processor outperformed classical machines by a factor of 13,000, completing the computation in hours instead of years.
This milestone follows years of incremental progress. In 2019, Google’s Sycamore chip first demonstrated “quantum supremacy.”
By 2024, Willow had corrected its own quantum errors in real time. The 2025 achievement goes further, offering the first fully verifiable, independently confirmed result that transforms quantum computing from theory to proof.
Speaking on the milestone, Sundar Pichai, Google’s CEO, said:
The Bitcoin concerns
Bitcoin’s architecture rests on elliptic curve and hash-based cryptography, specifically the SHA-256 algorithm.
Its security depends on how long it would take even the fastest computer to reverse a private key from its corresponding public key.
This is a feat that would take classical machines billions of years. However, a quantum computer capable of running Shor’s algorithm could, in theory, crack those cryptographic primitives exponentially faster.
In practice, Bitcoin remains secure for now. Google’s Willow uses just 105 qubits, far below the millions of error-corrected, logical qubits needed to threaten real-world cryptography.
Yet, that doesn’t fully comfort analysts like Jameson Lopp, who estimates that around 25% of all Bitcoin (roughly 4.9 million BTC) sits in addresses whose public keys are already exposed.
These coins, belonging mostly to early users and dormant wallets, would be the first to face risk if a cryptographically capable quantum system emerged.
Moreover, institutional concerns have also begun to surface.
Earlier in the year, BlackRock, issuer of the world’s largest Bitcoin ETF, flagged quantum risk, warning that advances in computing could “undermine the cryptographic framework underpinning Bitcoin.”
While the firm noted that such threats remain “theoretical at this stage,” it stressed that disclosure was necessary to inform investors about technology that “could alter [BTC’s] fundamental security assumptions.”
The pushback
Despite the headlines, most industry experts caution against panic.
Bitcoin expert Timothy Peterson also argued that Willow’s impressive results are far from posing a practical threat.
According to him:
Bitcoin entrepreneur Ben Sigman agrees with this view, while pointing out that:
In fact, Anis Chohan, the CTO of Inflectiv.ai, told CryptoSlate that “we’re looking at least a decade, possibly two, before it becomes a real concern.”
Still, not everyone is reassured. Charles Edwards, founder of Capriole, warned that ignoring quantum risk could result in the “biggest bear market ever” by next year.
Meanwhile, Jeff Park, CIO at ProCap BTC, offered a more philosophical view by framing quantum computing as the “climate change” of Bitcoin. He said:
What next?
Beyond speculation, developers are already exploring post-quantum cryptography that involves new systems based on lattice problems, multivariate equations, and hash-based signatures that can resist quantum attacks. The US National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) has shortlisted several such algorithms for standardization.
At the same time, Bitcoin Core contributors have floated proposals for gradual migration toward quantum-resistant address formats.
However, implementing them requires broad consensus across miners, exchanges, and wallet providers, which is a governance feat nearly as complex as the technology itself.
Still, Chohan concluded:
The post Can Google’s 13,000× “quantum echoes” put Bitcoin’s keys on a clock? appeared first on CryptoSlate.
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MySQL Single Leader Replication with Node.js and Docker
command: --server-id=1 --log-bin=ON The --server-id option gives each MySQL server in your replication setup its own name tag. Each one has to be unique and without it, replication won’t work at all. Another cool option not included here is binlog_format=ROW. This tells MySQL how to keep track of changes before passing them along to the replicas. By default, MySQL already uses row-based replication, but you can explicitly set it to ROW to be sure or switch it to STATEMENT if you’d rather log the actual SQL statements instead of row-by-row changes. \ Run our containers on docker Now, in the terminal, we can run the following command to spin up our database containers: docker-compose up -d \ Setting Up Our Master (Primary) Server To configure our master server, we would have to first access the running instance on docker using the following command docker exec -it mysql-master bash This command opens an interactive Bash shell inside the running Docker container named mysql-master, allowing us to run commands directly inside that container. \ Now that we’re inside the container, we can access the MySQL server and start running commands. type: mysql -uroot -p This will log you into MySQL as the root user. You’ll be prompted to enter the password you set in your docker-compose.yml file. \ Next, we need to create a special user that our replicas will use to connect to the master server and pull data. Inside the MySQL prompt, run the following commands: \ CREATE USER 'repl_user'@'%' IDENTIFIED BY 'replication_pass'; GRANT REPLICATION SLAVE ON . TO 'repl_user'@'%'; FLUSH PRIVILEGES; Here’s what’s happening: CREATE USER makes a new MySQL user called repl_user with the password replication_pass. GRANT REPLICATION SLAVE gives this user permission to act as a replication client. FLUSH PRIVILEGES tells MySQL to reload the user permissions so they take effect immediately. \ Time to Configure the Replica (Secondary) Servers a. First, let’s access the replica containers the same way we did with the master. Run this command in your terminal for each of the replica containers: \ docker exec -it <replica_container_name> bash mysql -uroot -p <replica_container_name> should be replace with the name of the replica container you are trying to setup b. Now it’s time to tell our replica where to get its data from. While inside the replica’s MySQL shell, run the following command to configure replication using the master’s details: CHANGE REPLICATION SOURCE TO SOURCE_HOST='mysql-master', SOURCE_USER='repl_user', SOURCE_PASSWORD='replication_pass', GET_SOURCE_PUBLIC_KEY=1; With the replication settings in place, let’s fire up the replica and get it syncing with the master. Still inside the MySQL shell on the replica, run: START REPLICA; This starts the replication process. To make sure everything is working, check the replica’s status with:
SHOW REPLICA STATUS\G; Look for Replica_IO_Running and Replica_SQL_Running — if both say Yes, congratulations! 🎉 Your replica is now successfully connected to the master and replicating data in real time.
Testing Our Replication Setup from the Node.js App Now that our replication is successfully set up, we can configure our Node.js server to observe the real-time effect of data being replicated from the master server to the replica server whenever we write to it. We start by installing the following dependencies:
npm i express mysql2 sequelize \ Now create a folder called src in the root directory and add the following files inside that folder connection.js, index.js and model.js. Our current directory should look like this We can now set up our connections to our master and replica server in the connection.js file as shown below
const Sequelize = require("sequelize"); const sequelize = new Sequelize({ dialect: "mysql", replication: { write: { host: "127.0.0.1", username: "root", password: "master", database: "replicaDb", }, read: [ { host: "127.0.0.1", username: "root", password: "slave", database: "replicaDb", port: 3307 }, { host: "127.0.0.1", username: "root", password: "slave", database: "replicaDb", port: 3308 }, { host: "127.0.0.1", username: "root", password: "slave", database: "replicaDb", port: 3309 }, ], }, }); async function connectdb() { try { await sequelize.authenticate(); } catch (error) { console.error("❌ unable to connect to the follower database", error); } } connectdb(); module.exports = { sequelize, }; \ We can now create a User table in the model.js file
const {DataTypes} = require("sequelize"); const { sequelize } = require("./connection"); const User = sequelize.define("User", { name: { type: DataTypes.STRING, allowNull: false, }, email: { type: DataTypes.STRING, unique: true, allowNull: false, }, }); module.exports = User \ and finally in our index.js file we can start our server and listen for connections on port 3000. from the code sample below, all inserts or updates will be routed by sequelize to the master server. while all read queries will be routed to the read replicas.
const express = require("express"); const { sequelize } = require("./connection"); const User = require("./model"); const app = express(); app.use(express.json()); async function main() { await sequelize.sync({ alter: true }); app.get("/", (req, res) => { res.status(200).json({ message: "first step to setting server up", }); }); app.post("/user", async (req, res) => { const { email, name } = req.body; let newUser = await User.build({ name, email, }); // This INSERT will go to the write (master) connection newUser = newUser.save({ returning: false }); res.status(201).json({ message: "User successfully created", }); }); app.get("/user", async (req, res) => { // This SELECT query will go to one of the read replicas const users = await User.findAll(); res.status(200).json(users); }); app.listen(3000, () => { console.log("server has connected"); }); } main(); When you make a POST request to the /users endpoint, take a moment to check both the master and replica servers to observe how data is replicated in real time. Right now, we are relying on Sequelize to automatically route requests, which works for development but isn’t robust enough for a production environment. In particular, if the master node goes down, Sequelize cannot automatically redirect requests to a newly elected leader. In the next part of this series, we’ll explore strategies to handle these challenges
