[tagrun]

What big gap are you referring to that you believe exists between the theory of any quantum computing platform (which is device physics) and the experiment?

You seem to be conflating the theory with pitches to investors?

The number of qubits is increasing exponentially, and the error rates are getting lower. People have factored numbers larger than 21 (not that Shor's algorithm is commonly used benchmarks by experimentalists at this point but people with little knowledge about quantum computers and device physics love it, https://link.springer.com/chapter/10.1007/978-3-032-12983-3_... did 221 and and in fact, you can do it yourself using Qiskit on IBM's publicly available devices [or on a local simulator for few qubits] following their tutorial https://qiskit.qotlabs.org/docs/tutorials/shors-algorithm if memory serves the largest instance for public is ibm_kingston with 156 qubits https://quantum.cloud.ibm.com/computers?limit=25&system=ibm_...) but it will take more time until we have millions of good qubits to harvest your Satoshis.

For the programmer folks here, as a physicists working on the device side of things for many years now, the best analogy I have is: we didn't get from a few hand-made vacuum tubes to billions of transistors with 18A manufacturing process overnight, and we won't get from hundreds to millions of better qubits overnight either. A realistic expectation would be thousands within this decade, but keep in mind that the growth has so far been exponential in various types of qubits, much like Moore's law, so reaching to millions of qubits shouldn't take us 10 millenia.