New quantum computing advances have revealed that building a utility-scale quantum computer that can crack one of the most vital cryptosystems,elliptic curves, does not require nearly the resources anticipated. Researchers demonstrated the use of neutral atoms as reconfigurable qubits that have free access to each other, which could allow a quantum computer to break 256-bit elliptic curve cryptography (ECC) in 10 days while using 100 times less overhead than previously estimated. In a second paper, Google researchers demonstrated how to break ECC-securing blockchains for Bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies in less than 9 minutes, resulting in a 20-fold resource reduction. The advances are largely driven by new quantum architectures developed by physicists and computer scientists in a push to create quantum computers that operate correctly even in the presence of errors.