A report released on February 6th by the analytics firm CoinShares says that the risks of quantum computing in Bitcoin are much more limited than generally thought.
Scholl’s quantum algorithm could theoretically compromise the private key, but it Just 10,200 Bitcoin (BTC)Approximately 0.05% of the total supply becomes vulnerable; As published by CoinShares, it has the potential to disrupt the market. This perspective currently excludes scenarios where there is an imminent organized threat to the network.
This vulnerability is primarily limited to old Pay-to-Public-Key (P2PK) addresses, where the public key is permanently exposed. However, according to CoinShares, some 1.6 million Bitcoin in this formatMost are spread across thousands of small accounts that would require centuries of computing to hack, even under the most optimistic quantum conditions.
In contrast, modern addresses (P2PKH or P2SH) hide the public key behind a hash and only reveal it when making a payment. This allows the CoinShares team to Opportunity to attack in just 10 minutes (average time between blocks), forcing a hypothetical attacker to decrypt the key before the transaction is confirmed by the miner.
The CoinShares documentation states that to achieve such processing power in minutes, Technically impossible for decades.
Disagreement in the Bitcoiner community
CoinShares claims that it typically estimates that 25% of the supply is “at risk.” Include temporary and mitigable exposures through good practicesAvoid reusing addresses, etc.
The following CoinShares chart shows: There are 1,635,720 bits of BTC vulnerabledistributed over 35,935 addresses. The majority of these coins (1,625,092 BTC) are concentrated in the 10-100 BTC range, which represents the main core of quantum exposure identified.
This view is in sharp contrast to that of Project Eleven, which specializes in quantum computing.
According to his research, close 33% of all Bitcoins in circulation could be vulnerable As reported by CriptoNoticias, this is happening frequently on exchanges and centralized platforms, mainly due to the reuse of addresses with already published public keys.
On February 8, Project Eleven called CoinShares’ report “inaccurate and dangerous” claims.
Prominent Bitcoin developer Jameson Ropp joined in the criticism, pointing out that the analysis omitted the following points: Cold storage address where the public key was published It warned that more than 800,000 BTC is potentially at risk in just the 10 richest addresses.
Yuvi Reitman, founder of a quantum company, was also critical, questioning the report’s conclusions.
CoinShares claims that to beat Bitcoin you need to: 13 million physical qubits“It only takes a few thousand logical qubits to crack the Bitcoin key,” Reitman said, a claim that directly contradicts orders of magnitude claims made by analytics firms.
Although Reitman did not elaborate on how many physical qubits those “thousands of logical qubits” represent, his proposal fundamentally questions the technical and temporal assumptions used by CoinShares.
How far away is the quantum threat, according to CoinShares?
Bitcoin security is based on elliptic curve signatures and the SHA-256 hash function. According to a CoinShares report, the quantum threat is not systemic; 21 million coins limit cannot be changed Nor can you avoid proof of work. Risk is currently limited to specific vectors that do not compromise the structural integrity or economics of the protocol.
According to the company, defeating the elliptic curve algorithms (ECDSA and Schnorr) would require up to 100,000 times more processing power than current systems, so the success of the attack is uncertain.
The CoinShares report pegs the emergence of related quantum computers “in the 2030s and beyond.” Menpur They need to crack the key within 10 minutes, a technological milestone they believe has been impossible for decades.
The analysis advises: Bold interventions like hard forks (hard fork) Burning weak currencies as it would endanger network neutrality and property rights. For CoinShares, acting prematurely on unproven crypto is more dangerous than the quantum threat itself, potentially introducing significant bugs and undermining the immutability that defines Bitcoin.
The most appropriate solution is a gradual evolution of defenses, similar to the adoption of Schnorr signatures. A future soft fork has been proposed that will optionally incorporate post-quantum signatures, User voluntarily transfers funds In a new direction. This path is supported by experts like Adam Back and guarantees future security without compromising the fundamental principles of the protocol.
