Construction has begun on the PsiQuantum mega-qubit facility, which scientists say is large enough to crack Bitcoin encryption.

Quantum computing company PsiQuantum has begun construction on a million-qubit quantum computing facility in Chicago. PsiQuantum co-founder Peter Shadbolt shared photos of the construction site on the X platform on Thursday, stating that 500 tons of steel had been erected in six days. The company previously announced in September that it had raised $1 billion to build the facility in partnership with chipmaker Nvidia, aiming to make quantum computing commercially viable to support next-generation AI supercomputers. Scientists say that the computing power of a million qubits is equivalent to tens of billions of ordinary computers, enough to crack Bitcoin's encryption. Bitcoin developers are currently discussing whether to take immediate action against the quantum threat through a hard fork. A preprint scientific paper published last month suggests that cracking a 2048-bit key would require approximately 100,000 qubits, while Bitcoin encryption uses a 256-bit key. The largest quantum computer currently in use is at Caltech, with 6100 qubits. PsiQuantum co-founder Terry Rudolph stated in July that the company has no plans to use quantum computers to derive private keys from public keys. A study by crypto asset management firm CoinShares in February of this year indicated that only 10,230 bitcoins simultaneously possess quantum fragility and have publicly visible encryption keys for their wallet addresses, worth approximately $728 million at current market prices.