A quantum computer successfully cracks a standard 256-bit elliptic-curve private key before 2035.

Question

Six frontier AI models put this at 6% by 16 Sept 2036. Full reasoning from every model.

WillHappen.ai · Accepted Answer

6% — the median of 6 frontier models, resolving by 2036-09-16.

Answer

Gemini (Google): 14% — Cracking secp256k1 requires millions of physical qubits with low error rates, far beyond credible 2035 hardware roadmaps. Shor's algorithm for 256-bit ECC requires roughly 2,000 logical qubits, equating to over 1 million physical qubits at 10^-3 error rates. Roadmaps from IBM and Google project only thousands of physical qubits by 2030, making commercial-scale fault tolerance by 2035 unlikely. A breakthrough in quantum error correction architectures requiring sub-100k physical qubits would significantly raise these odds.

Answer

Claude (Anthropic): 4% — Requires millions of logical qubits with error correction, far beyond any credible 2035 roadmap. Breaking secp256k1 needs ~2000-3000 logical qubits with millions of physical qubits under current error-correction overhead estimates. Current best quantum computers have order-hundreds of noisy physical qubits and only nascent logical qubit demonstrations, nowhere near this scale. Roadmaps from IBM, Google, and others target thousands of physical qubits by early-2030s, still orders of magnitude short of what's needed for 256-bit ECC.

Answer

GPT (OpenAI): 9% — It turns on building millions of error-corrected logical qubits with sustained low-latency quantum operations. Shor attacks on secp256k1 require a fault-tolerant machine far beyond today’s noisy, sub-thousand-qubit hardware. Published resource estimates generally imply millions of physical qubits plus long coherent computation, not merely a larger chip. A credible 2030s fault-tolerant breakthrough or sharply lower code overhead would move this estimate materially upward.

Answer

Grok (xAI): 8% — Fault-tolerant QC with ~2.3k logical qubits must run Shor on secp256k1 by 31 Dec 2034. IBM/Google roadmaps still project only noisy 100k-qubit machines ~2029–33, far short of the millions of physical qubits needed. No public demonstration even of 10-logical-qubit factoring exists; historical QC scaling has slipped 5–10 years repeatedly. A 2027–28 breakthrough in error-correcting codes that cuts overhead 10× would be the main thing that moves this above 20.

Answer

DeepSeek (DeepSeek): 3% — This needs millions of error-corrected qubits; the field is roughly three orders of magnitude short with under a decade left. Breaking secp256k1 via Shor needs ~2,330 logical qubits and ~1.3 billion Toffoli gates, translating to millions of physical qubits at realistic error rates. Best current hardware is ~100-1,000 noisy physical qubits; Google's 2024 roadmap targets one logical qubit by 2030, not millions. RSA-2048 factoring and ECC-256 breaking are comparable-scale milestones, and neither has been approached; no credible lab claims a path before 2035.

Answer

Qwen (Alibaba): 3% — Requires ~2,500 logical qubits with error correction; no roadmap shows that threshold being reached before 2035. Breaking secp256k1 needs ~2,500 logical qubits (millions of physical); IBM's 2033 roadmap targets ~100K physical qubits, far short. No lab has demonstrated fault-tolerant logical qubits at scale beyond single-digit counts as of 2026; error-correction overhead is the binding constraint. A surprise architectural breakthrough (e.g., topological qubits at scale) could shift this, but no credible path exists in any published roadmap within 9 years.

A quantum computer successfully cracks a standard 256-bit elliptic-curve private key before 2035.

A fault-tolerant quantum computer is made commercially available before 2032.

Apple releases the iPhone 18 Pro Max before October 31, 2026.

Apple officially releases a dual-screen device named iPhone Duo before December 31, 2027.

Apple releases the iPhone 18 before October 31, 2026.