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U.S. chips push funds quantum firms as Bitcoin and Ethereum plan upgrades

The Commerce Department finalized up to $100 million each in CHIPS Act awards for Rigetti, D-Wave, and Quantinuum, even as developers target a 2029 migration window for quantum resistance.

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Bitcoin and Ethereum developers are stepping up work to defend crypto wallets against a future quantum computer, while the U.S. Commerce Department finalized CHIPS Act support for major quantum-computing hardware makers, according to CoinDesk.

The Commerce Department awarded up to $100 million each to Rigetti, D-Wave, and Quantinuum and took minority stakes in the three companies, with the funding aimed at scaling hardware, manufacturing, and error-correction systems needed for larger, fault-tolerant machines.

Ethereum is targeting a quantum-resistant base layer by December 2029 across execution, consensus, and data, and its protocol team is planning for a potential “Q-day” as early as 2030. Bitcoin has no network-wide deadline, but development has accelerated around proposals including BIP-360 for a post-quantum output type and BIP-361 for a phased migration away from today’s ECDSA and Schnorr signatures.

No quantum computer is expected to be able to threaten Bitcoin or Ethereum by 2029, CoinDesk reports, but migrating wallets and handling exposed public keys could take years and potentially strand assets that are not moved. Google Quantum AI has estimated that attacking 256-bit elliptic-curve cryptography could require fewer than 1,200 error-corrected qubits, while IBM plans to deliver Starling in 2029.

Latest closeBitcoin $78,536.73 ▲0.1%|Ethereum $2,488.03 ▲0.1%

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