Crypto: Bitcoin Doesn’t Have 20 Years Because The Quantum Threat Is Already
Bitcoin’s 20-year quantum timeline collapses. 25% of the Bitcoin supply sits in vulnerable addresses requiring urgent migration.
Opinion by: Youssef El Maddarsi, chief business officer of Naoris Protocol
Some Bitcoin (BTC) advocates argue that the network faces no meaningful quantum threat in the immediate future, pointing to emerging NIST-approved post-quantum standards and suggesting that Bitcoin can simply upgrade long before any cryptographically relevant quantum computer appears. This confidence relies on the risky assumption that the quantum threat begins only once a machine can break keys in real time. Adam Back argued that Bitcoin has at least 20-40 years to ready itself, but the quantum threat is already active today.
Bitcoin cannot rely on a leisurely multi-decade upgrade path.
Some readers may strongly object to this, insisting that quantum timelines are still too uncertain to justify urgent action and that raising alarms risks inducing unnecessary fear. The facts do not support complacency.
IBM recently made a major leap toward practical quantum computing with its new generation of chips, claiming that these processors and their faster error-correction methods could enable the company to reach quantum advantage during 2026 and deliver early fault-tolerant systems by 2029. So, the race is intensifying.
Vitalik Buterin said at a 2025 Devconnect conference that quantum computers could break elliptic-curve cryptography sooner than expected, possibly even before the 2028 US election, and advocated for Ethereum to transition to quantum-resistant cryptography within a few years. This contradicts the comfortable narrative from some Bitcoin enthusiasts, showing that even Ethereum’s founder thinks the quantum timeline is much tighter than people want to believe.
Deloitte also recently reported that roughly 4 million BTC, around 25% of all usable supply, sit in addresses that expose public keys vulnerable to quantum attacks. Researchers have long warned that a sufficiently advanced quantum computer could derive private keys from exposed public keys using Shor’s algorithm, enabling attackers to instantly drain legacy wallets.
This isn’t unique to Bitcoin. Ethereum and most blockchains today rely on elliptic curve cryptography, and quantum will shatter that. Buterin has already outlined emergency procedures for the day quantum computers crack Ethereum accounts.
The argument that Bitcoin has decades to prepare for the quantum threat rests on the be
Source: CoinTelegraph
