Quantum attacks looming, hundreds of billions of dollars in Bitcoin may face its first "life or death test"

Author: Bitcoin Magazine Pro

Translation: Baihua Blockchain

Bitcoin is facing its first real survival threat, which does not come from government bans or market crashes, but from quantum computing. The 1.1 million bitcoins stored in Satoshi’s wallet (worth about $100 billion), as well as approximately 25% of the circulating supply of Bitcoin, are currently exposed to vulnerable old cryptographic keys that are highly susceptible to quantum attacks. When quantum computers mature—whether in 5 years or 25 years—these bitcoins will be cracked.

The Threat

Bitcoin’s security relies on Elliptic Curve Digital Signature Algorithm (ECDSA). These algorithms make it extremely difficult to forge Bitcoin signatures mathematically without knowing the private key. For traditional computers, cracking such signatures would take millions of years. However, the way quantum computers operate is completely different, and they could potentially solve the discrete logarithm problem behind ECDSA in minutes or hours.

Figure 1: Satoshi’s Wallet Holds Nearly 1.1 Million Bitcoins Not all bitcoins face the same risk. Early Pay-to-Pubkey (P2PK) addresses (including Satoshi’s address) have public keys directly visible on the blockchain. For these bitcoins, quantum computers are essentially a “master key” that can directly access the wallet. In contrast, later address types (such as Pay-to-Pubkey-Hash, P2PKH) hide the public key behind cryptographic hashes, only revealing the public key when a transaction is initiated. This creates a short window of vulnerability: between revealing the public key for a transfer and the transaction being confirmed by miners, a powerful enough quantum computer could potentially intercept during this period.

Uncertain Timeline

The timeline for quantum computing is highly uncertain. It could arrive within a year or never materialize. But uncertainty is the enemy, because Bitcoin requires proactive migration, not passive adaptation. If quantum computers emerge before Bitcoin has migrated to post-quantum cryptography (PQC), Bitcoin could be doomed. Thousands of billions of dollars’ worth of public keys will be exposed, allowing attackers to start stealing bitcoins and dumping them on the market, leading to a catastrophic price crash.

Figure 2: Comparison of Long-term Exposure Vulnerability Across Different Bitcoin Address Types The timeline for implementing PQC solutions, in the best-case scenario, involves only 6 to 12 months to finalize the code and reach consensus; depending on the extent of signature optimization, the migration process could take an additional 6 months to 2 years.

Token Burning

The question is whether a deadline should be set to “burn” those bitcoins that have not migrated to quantum-resistant addresses by the deadline. If about 20-30% of the supply is simultaneously unlocked (cracked), Bitcoin would face a huge trust crisis, and its argument as a hard currency would collapse. Such a large-scale supply sell-off would create a bear market and could threaten Bitcoin’s entire philosophy.

Figure 3: Bitcoin Circulating Supply However, burning tokens faces significant philosophical obstacles. It essentially means that Bitcoin could become confiscated property. If the network decides that burning tokens can save itself, what’s to stop governments or controllers from deciding which addresses (such as assets of terrorists or dissidents) can be destroyed and censored? This would set a precedent, destroying the sovereignty of individuals over their assets.

Primary Goal

Bitcoin is the world’s largest “honeypot.” It’s the only financial network where you can directly steal value and have 24/7 liquidity to cash out. The US dollar cannot do this—stealing large sums can lead to transfer blocks, and even if hacked, institutions will refund customers. Bitcoin has no such luxury; it relies solely on trust in the code.

Figure 4: Number of Addresses with Balances Over 10,000 BTC Is Significantly High If someone develops the ability to crack encryption with quantum computing, Bitcoin wallets will become prime targets, because they are easier to cash out and have a first-mover advantage. If the money has already been stolen by the first cracker, the second will get nothing.

Conclusion

While this survival-level vulnerability has long been recognized in cryptographic literature, the window for proactive action is shrinking, requiring miners, exchanges, wallet providers, and individual stakeholders to immediately focus on strategic planning. The real test is not whether the threat exists, but whether the network can coordinate and systematically migrate to quantum-resistant signature algorithms before sufficiently powerful quantum computers appear.