According to a report published by the Quantus Network team on May 27, Bitcoin faces the most difficult post-quantum transition problem in the crypto asset ecosystem due to the combination of its governance model, the permanent publication of on-chain public keys, and millions of BTC residing in addresses that no one can migrate.
Based on that, the report paper We also highlight two relevant aspects of Google Quantum AI. The first is Digital assets worth over USD 2 trillion Although these are protected by elliptic curve cryptography (ECC), they are vulnerable to Scholl’s algorithm, which a sufficiently powerful quantum computer can run to derive the private key from the public key.
Second, the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) aims to Stop RSA schemes (used in banks, etc.) and ECC-256 (used in networks like Bitcoin, Ethereum, etc.) by 2030 and completely ban them by 2035..
Bitcoin knot for quantum computing
In the case of Bitcoin, there is no party with the power to force changes, and changes only move forward when there is broad consensus within the community.
The Quantus study explains:
Bitcoin’s governance structure is intentionally conservative. Changes will only move forward if there is broad agreement among miners, Bitcoin Core developers, node operators, exchanges, and users, and no party has the power to force the changes. This structure provides a bulwark against hasty decisions. This becomes a severe limitation if your network needs to perform cryptographic migrations against a schedule.
Learn about quantum networks.
Joe Mattia, chief operating officer at Quantus, said: “The transition itself will take years. Wallets and exchanges will require infrastructure upgrades, and each user will need to move their funds individually. It can only begin once the governance process has determined the implementation details, which in itself will take time.”
ARK Invest agreed with this view in a study published in March, as reported by CriptoNoticias. This is because the company pointed out that Bitcoin’s decentralized governance is weak. Its greatest strength and at the same time the main obstacle to implementing changes on time.
In this context, the Quantus team highlighted that the BIP-360 proposal, which was officially incorporated into the official Bitcoin repository on February 11, is the most developed effort to initiate this transition. This proposal introduces a new type of address. Hide your public key even when making paymentsneutralizes attacks while stationary.
However, as of early 2026, there is no consensus for activation. “While the proposal exists, the political and social arrangements needed to implement it have not yet materialized.”supporting the document de Quantus.
Bitcoin not transferable problem
A successful transition from Bitcoin to post-quantum cryptography will force decisions about funds that no one can move. Between 2.3 million and 3.7 million BTC Chainaosis estimates cited in the Quantus report suggest that the private keys are located at addresses where the owners no longer have access to them. Since there is no one to manage these currencies, they cannot be migrated to post-quantum addresses.
The most visible aspect is the approximately 1 million BTC mined in the first few months of the network in the original Payment to Public Key (P2PK) format, where the public key is published directly on-chain, the Quantus team says. those funds They will be the first targets of quantum attacks. For funds at rest: The material the attacker needs is already publicly available, so there is no need to intercept transactions.
Regarding these currencies, the Quantus report shows two open positions.
- do not intervene: leaves them vulnerable and treats the final quantum theft as the loss of the initial occupant.
- Set migration deadlines and freeze or delete anything that doesn’t migrate: This would be the same as confiscating funds from people who simply didn’t act in time or lost access years ago. “This is a political problem, and Bitcoin’s governance structure (which relies on loose agreements between miners, developers, and users without formal decision-making authority) is not equipped to resolve it,” the Quantas paper argues.
Ethereum and quantum: advantages and some disadvantages
On the other hand, “a post-quantum hard fork is politically conceivable within the Ethereum model in a way that it is not within the Bitcoin model,” the Quantus report argues.
Ethereum has structural advantages over Bitcoin: its history hard fork Adjustments (for example, DAO forks and changes to PoS) indicate: can make significant changes When foundations, developers, and validators work together.
but, This advantage coexists with a larger attack surface.This is because, unlike Bitcoin, Ethereum is vulnerable not only to transaction signatures, but also to consensus mechanisms and ecosystem smart contracts.
The exhibition spans the entire crypto ecosystem
Quantas’ paper warns that public discussion of the quantum threat underestimates the true scope of the exposure. Decentralized finance (DeFi) protocols that hold billions of assets, manage keys for stablecoins like USDC and USDT, and cross-chain bridges (cross chain), price oracle and on-chain governance system These rely on the same elliptic curve signature scheme.
For example, an attacker who compromised the minting key of a major stablecoin could issue an unlimited supply, collapse its parity, and trigger a cascade of liquidations in all protocols that use it as collateral, they point out from the Quantus Network.
Finally, regarding deadlines, the report cites data from Scott Aaronson, a computational complexity theorist at the University of Texas at Austin. According to Quantus, the expert published a series of studies between November and December 2025 warning those who believe Bitcoin will be safe for the next five years. They are making the same mistake as the physicists in 1938, who dismissed nuclear weapons as a distant threat.
In a later entry he states it more directly. If the pace of progress in quantum hardware continues, Aaronson estimates that fault-tolerant quantum computers will emerge. within the next 10 years.
So while some stakeholders believe quantum will arrive by 2030, and others postpone the danger for a decade, the community continues to debate the potential risks this technology implies for digital systems, traditional banking, and Bitcoin and other crypto asset networks.
(Tag Translation) Bitcoin (BTC)
