The US Commerce Department on Sept. 9 finalized CHIPS Act awards of up to $100 million each for Rigetti, D-Wave and Quantinuum, while taking minority equity stakes in the three quantum computing companies. The funding is intended to expand the hardware, manufacturing and error-correction systems needed for larger-scale fault-tolerant quantum machines.
The move lands as both Bitcoin and Ethereum step up work on post-quantum migration. The central issue is not whether today’s quantum machines can already break mainstream cryptography. It is whether the two networks can replace the cryptographic systems securing tens of billions of dollars in assets before hardware progress closes the gap.
Ethereum sets December 2029 as a base-layer deadline
Ethereum’s protocol team has set December 2029 as a self-imposed cutoff for making the base layer quantum-resistant across execution, consensus and data. That target assumes a potential "Q-Day" could arrive as early as 2030.
Ethereum faces a coordination challenge rather than a single protocol change. The Ethereum Foundation has a dedicated post-quantum team and a fixed target, but moving wallets, applications and users onto new signature schemes could prove more demanding than the base-layer upgrade itself.
Bitcoin work on BIP-360 and BIP-361 has accelerated
Bitcoin does not have a unified network-wide deadline for post-quantum migration, but work this year around BIP-360 and BIP-361 has clearly picked up.
- BIP-360 focuses on post-quantum output types.
- BIP-361 proposes a phased migration away from ECDSA and Schnorr signatures.
Researchers and institutions are also treating 2029 as the window by which a credible migration path needs to be ready. Bitcoin’s transition is especially difficult because millions of BTC sit in addresses where the public key has already been exposed, including an estimated 1 million BTC associated with Satoshi Nakamoto.
BIP-361 also proposes ultimately restricting legacy signatures after the migration period. That could leave funds stranded for users who fail to move their assets in time.
Hardware roadmaps are moving closer to crypto’s migration window
Earlier this year, Google Quantum AI estimated that attacking 256-bit elliptic curve cryptography may require fewer than 1,200 error-corrected qubits.
Hardware timelines are also converging with the migration window. IBM plans to deliver its fault-tolerant Starling machine in 2029, targeting 100 million gate operations on 200 logical qubits. Quantinuum is aiming to reach several hundred logical qubits in roughly the same period.
The race around post-quantum upgrades is shifting from a theoretical security question to an engineering deadline. For Bitcoin and Ethereum, the next phase is not only about protocol design, but about whether their ecosystems can complete a migration to new cryptography before the 2029 window closes.