Emerge Technology Trend of the Year 2025: Quantum computing is no longer background noise

When Caltech scientists activated their new quantum array of neutral atoms in September, the quantum machine surpassed a threshold that many scientists thought was years away. For the first time, researchers managed to trap 6,100 atomic qubits in a single system and maintain coherence in a way that took quantum hardware beyond the “toy demo” stage.

What happened in that lab meant that large-scale quantum hardware with error correction is no longer a distant aspiration but a credible possibility. And for digital currencies like Bitcoin, whose security depends on cryptography that was assumed secure for decades, it indicates that the quietly accelerating threat posed by quantum computers is now coming into view.

The threat is not imminent, but the window for adaptation is finite. That’s why, at Emerge, we consider the advancement of quantum computing (and the unpreparedness of cryptocurrencies) our technology trend of the year.

“We can now see a path to large error-correcting quantum computers. The basic components are in place,” lead researcher Manuel Endres said in a statement.

For years, the standard consolation for cryptographers has been that quantum computers were still too noisy, too fragile, and too immature to matter to cryptocurrencies. In 2025, that stance weakened. Roadmaps were tightened. Improved bug fixes. And several labs produced results that made fault-tolerant machines seem like a matter of when, not if.

What changed in the laboratories?

So-called “neutral atom systems” use electrically neutral atoms as qubits, trapping individual atoms in fixed positions with lasers so that each can store and manipulate quantum information. “Coherence” measures how long those qubits remain in a usable quantum state before noise destroys them. Both became central in 2025, as the field moved from laboratory demonstrations to architectures designed at scale.

To understand the advances of 2025, it is necessary to understand what has held quantum systems back. Qubits (quantum bits) lose their quantum state easily, and scaling them often amplifies that instability. This year, several systems behaved differently.

Google, IBM and Caltech reported breakthroughs in 2025 that narrowed the timeline for fault-tolerant quantum machines. Google’s 105-qubit Willow processor showed sharp error rate reductions as it grew, and in October the company said its Quantum Echoes benchmark ran about 13,000 times faster than leading supercomputers. The results indicated that stable logical qubits could be achieved with far fewer physical qubits than the thousand-to-one ratios long assumed.

IBM advanced the panorama from another angle. Its “Cat” family processors demonstrated 120-qubit entanglement and extended coherence, and its Starling roadmap, published in June, targeted 200 error-correcting qubits by 2029 with support for 100 million quantum gates. A separate effort with AMD demonstrated that standard FPGA hardware could execute error correction logic ten times faster than necessary, bringing real-time correction closer to practical use.

Caltech added scale in September through what researchers described as the world’s largest system of neutral atoms, trapping 6,100 cesium atoms as qubits, demonstrating coherence for 13 seconds with an operational accuracy of 99.98%. Taken together, the results pointed to a broader shift: the quality, control, and scaling efficiency of qubits improved at the same time, reinforcing expectations about when usable logical qubits (and with them credible threats to Bitcoin’s signature scheme) might arrive.

Erik Garcell, director of quantum business development at Classiq, said the biggest change is the changing relationship between physical and logical qubits. “The trend is a few hundred to one,” he said. Deciphera huge improvement over previous estimates that called for thousands. “Much of the industry’s attention in 2025 was focused on bug fixes.”

Qubits collapse under environmental interference, limiting how long they can remain coherent. That’s where bug fixing comes into play. Error correction works by duplicating the state of a qubit across many physical qubits, giving the system enough redundancy to detect when noise throws one off course and automatically correct it. Without it, qubits fall apart too quickly to perform meaningful calculations.

Across the field, researchers said the same thing: Machines aren’t just growing; They are behaving.

Bitcoin reads the room

While Bitcoin is not threatened by the machines that exist today, what changed in 2025 was the tone of the conversation about tomorrow.

Jameson Lopp, who co-founded Casa in 2018 to provide tools that allow people to store and protect their own Bitcoin, said the risk remains far away.

“Whether the network can be ready in time or not ultimately depends on how quickly advances in quantum computing occur,” Lopp said. Decipher. “We are orders of magnitude away from having a cryptographically relevant quantum computer. There need to be multiple major breakthroughs before it is truly a threat to Bitcoin.”

Still, Bitcoin must face a limitation that other blockchains like Ethereum or Zcash do not have: coordination. Migrating to a quantum-safe signing scheme would require the simultaneous movement of miners, wallet developers, exchanges, and millions of users.

“I really don’t see that whole process happening in less than five years,” Lopp said. “Once you have millions and millions of individual actors, asking them to coordinate to achieve change becomes effectively impossible.”

What experts expect next

Quantum risk is often imagined as a sudden moment when machines become dangerous. Researchers say reality will seem more gradual.

Ethan Heilman, a researcher at MIT’s Digital Currency Initiative and co-author of Bitcoin’s BIP-360 post-quantum proposal, said improvements accumulate over time. “We will see gradients as it gets stronger and stronger,” he said. Decipher.

Work from a long horizon. Many of its users already treat Bitcoin as a multi-generational asset. “If people treat Bitcoin like a savings account, something they can lock up for a century and hope their kids come into their own, then the protocol should be designed to withstand that timeline,” he said.

Heilman hopes Bitcoin will adapt. But he noted that markets react to stagnation rather than risk. “The degree to which Bitcoin fails to address that threat could cause downward pressure on the price,” he said.

The field, he said, cares less about dates than the direction of progress.

“We will see steady progress, but going from a coal-powered train to the Concorde in a year seems very unlikely to me,” he said. “I think it will happen, but I think we will see stages.”

How fast can quantum computers go?

Alex Shih, head of product at Q-CTRL, said quantum risk only becomes significant once machines can run large algorithms with error correction.

“If there is a large enough quantum computing resource, yes, in theory, it could break the current RSA encryption,” he said. Decipher. “But we’re still years away from getting to that point. Optimistically, maybe in the mid-2030s.”

The first fault-tolerant machines will not immediately compromise existing cryptography. They will expand the types of algorithms that quantum computers can realistically attempt as reliability improves.

Shih pointed to fragmentation as a challenge holding back the field. “Interoperability remains a major sticking point,” he said. “Each vendor releases different specifications and frameworks, and it’s up to the end user to make everything work together.”

Even with those hurdles, 2025 made the momentum clear. IBM achieved the milestones on its roadmap. Google’s scaling behavior lived up to expectations. Caltech provided stability at a size the field had never reached.

Together, these results gave researchers a clearer idea of ​​how the next decade will play out.

What we take away from 2025 and look to the future

Quantum computing didn’t threaten Bitcoin this year, but it did remove the ambiguity.

The researchers spoke more confidently about the deadlines. Developers in other industries began to adjust their long-term plans. The Bitcoin ecosystem, which rarely reviews its crypto fundamentals without external pressure, approached the discussion with new seriousness in 2025.

By the end of the year, the debate was no longer about whether the quantum would matter. That’s when its impact became inevitable.