QCP Group released an article today weighining in the quantum risk for crypto, following the Google whitepaper from March 30 showing Bitcoin‑style elliptic‑curve cryptography can be broken with far fewer quantum resources than previously assumed. Related Reading: Google Says End For Bitcoin Is Near? Quantum Computers Could Attack Crypto This Soon A Bigger Threat Beyond Crypto The crypto-quantum panic continues raging on, with multiple important voices from crypto and technology, such as former Binance CEO Changpeng Zhao (CZ), responding to the report in different ways. QCP’s article, written by Rachel Lee, establishes the firm’s opinion in a simple sentence: the quantum threat is more of a persistent structural challenge than a short‑term market threat. At QCP, we view this as a long-term structural issue, not an immediate market risk. The distinction matters. What Lee means is the target of the threat is not crypto in isolation: it’s the entire public‑key infrastructure stack that also secures banking rails such as SWIFT, TLS/HTTPS, VPNs and wider financial plumbing. A breakthrough in quantum computing that compromises ECC would therefore have system-wide implications, not just for digital assets. This quantum-vulnerability happens because what quantum computers could actually break are public‑key signatures (ECDSA, Ed25519, RSA), not the proof‑of‑work consensus mechanism that make blockchain technology to be considered highly secure. “A Transition, Not a Trigger”, QCP Says Lee reminds us that “we remain a considerable distance” from the technological power that would be needed to break the cited ECDLP standard. As of today, the most advanced quantum systems we have are operating roughly 1,000x below the necessary threshold to even conduct such an attack. More importantly, QCP argues that even in the scenario where we have the computational power that would make any of this possible, digital assets would not be, by ay means, the primary target. TradFi and networks carrying confidential or mission‑critical information are way more tempting targets. The global banking system and sensitive communications infrastructure would present far more immediate and valuable attack surfaces. Paradoxically, this means crypto is better positioned to coordinate contentious upgrades than many siloed banking and government systems that depend on slow hardware refresh cycles and legacy HSMs. The system is already repricing this structurally. Both the crypto sector and traditional finance are already pouring resources into post‑quantum defenses and migration plans. Protocol communities are testing mitigation approaches, even as global security standards are still being refined. Efforts such as the Italian NIST’s post‑quantum standards and Google’s own 2029 internal quantum deadline are grounding the quantum-risk from a sci‑fi edge case into a realistic technological transition. Related Reading: Bitcoin Range Traps Traders At $65K — Are Long‑Term Holders Finally Surrendering? Immediate Market Implications According to QCP, quantum is now a background macro risk factor for crypto, not a near‑term catalyst. It’s more relevant to long‑duration value, L1 roadmaps, and wallet design than to next‑month price action. Quantum computing is a long-term issue the industry should monitor and prepare for, not a near-term reason to reassess digital assets. Protocols and projects that can credibly ship post‑quantum signatures, hardened key‑management and private mempools may attract a “quantum‑ready” premium over time, while assets with ossified governance or huge pools of exposed coins will trade with a structural discount. At the time of writing, BTC trades for the highs $68k on the daily chart. Source: BTCUSD on Tradingview Cover image from Perplexity, BTCUSD chart from Tradingview
It sounds out of a sci-fi video game, but new research suggest quantum attackers could break Bitcoin’s blockchain and steal coins mid-transaction sooner than it was originally expected. Is Doomsday Near For Bitcoin? A new whitepaper and blogpost published on Tuesday by Google’s Quantum AI team claims that Bitcoin and Ethereum’s cryptography can be broken with fewer than 500,000 physical qubits and roughly 1,200 “logical” qubits, far below the “millions” that used to be cited. Related Reading: Hyperliquid’s Tokyo Edge Exposed — Secret Time Gap Is Tilting The Market Most blockchains and cryptocurrencies protect wallets and transactions using 256‑bit elliptic curve cryptography (a very strong mathematical lock) based on the discrete logarithm problem (ECDLP‑256). The research points at a significant decreased in the resources needed to break the ECDLP-256. The blog post says: We estimate that these circuits can be executed on a superconducting qubit CRQC with fewer than 500,000 physical qubits in a few minutes, given standard assumptions about hardware capabilities that are consistent with some of Google’s flagship quantum processors. This is an approximately 20-fold reduction in the number of physical qubits required to solve ECDLP-256 and a continuation of a long history of gradual optimization in compiling quantum algorithms to fault-tolerant circuits. “Cryptographically-relevant quantum computers (CRQS) pose a threat to widely deployed public-key cryptography”, the whitepaper claims. Instead of attacking wallets, the research models a live attack where a quantum adversary could steal bitcoin mid‑transaction in about 9 minutes by quickly using the briefly revealed public key to calculate the private key, giving a 41% chance of beating Bitcoin’s 10‑minute block time. In this sense, Ethereum might be less vulnerable than Bitcoin, as it confirms its transactions faster. The Culprit: Taproot This results put Taproot, Bitcoin’s 2021 upgrade, in a different perspective. Although Taproot boosted privacy and efficiency, it started exposing public keys on‑chain by default, stripping away the “hash-first” protective layer that older address formats had. Therefore, it has widened the pool of quantum‑exposed coins to about 6.9 million BTC, including Satoshi‑era and heavily reused addresses. A quantum computer is a computer that uses the rules of quantum physics to process information in ways normal computers can’t. Instead of bits that are either 0 or 1, it uses qubits, which can be 0, 1, or a blend of both at the same time, letting the machine explore many possibilities in parallel. Classical computers explore possibilities one‑by‑one (even if very fast). This means that, for certain math problems (like factoring huge numbers used in cryptography), a powerful quantum computer could solve in minutes what would take a classical supercomputer longer than the age of the universe. What This Means For Concerned Traders Despite it is true that no such machine exists yet, earlier this month Google set 2029 as an internal deadline for post‑quantum migration, compressing the perceived timeline for “Q‑day.” Researchers warn that post-quantum migration will take years, even if the hardware is not here yet. Related Reading: Over Half Of US Crypto Users Don’t Understand This Scary Tax Rule On the social network X, some users have already expressed their quantum panic. Coin Metric co-founder and Bitcoin advocate Nic Carter highlighted another paper released today from Oratomic, Caltech and UC Berkeley, showing quantum computers can break crypto with just 10,000 reconfigurable atomic qubits. and the craziest thing is that the Google Quantum AI paper (above) is maybe not even the most concerning quantum paper released _today_https://t.co/mSZi5Lk7do — nic carter (@nic_carter) March 31, 2026 Roughly one‑third of Bitcoin’s supply is now modeled as potentially quantum‑exposed over a long enough horizon, which could change how desks value old coins, Taproot usage and address‑reuse hygiene. Traders should watch for Taproot adoption metrics, progress or gridlock around BIP‑360‑style upgrades, and whether Bitcoin devs move toward a dated migration plan as Google’s 2029 clock ticks louder. At the moment of writing, BTC trades for the highs $66k. Source: BTCUSD on Tradingview Cover image from Perplexity, BTCUSD chart from Tradingview
BTQ Technologies moved a key Bitcoin (BTC) security proposal from theory to practice on Thursday, releasing Bitcoin Quantum testnet v0.3.0 with the first working implementation of Bitcoin Improvement Proposal 360 (BIP 360). The upgrade—aimed at making Bitcoin transactions resistant to future quantum-computing attacks—gives developers, miners, and researchers a live environment to test how quantum-resistant transactions would function on a running network. How Bitcoin Could Shield Keys From Quantum Attacks BIP 360, also known as Pay-to-Merkle-Root (P2MR), was merged into Bitcoin’s official BIP repository earlier this year but remains a draft proposal within the broader Bitcoin ecosystem. BTQ’s testnet release delivers the first functional implementation of that proposal, enabling participants to create, fund, sign, and spend P2MR transactions and observe the full lifecycle from mempool acceptance through broadcast and confirmation. Related Reading: Sen. Lummis Predicts Crypto Market Structure Markup In April, Senate Passage By Year-End The importance of BIP 360 stems from a long‑term cryptographic risk: in a future where quantum computers reach sufficient capability, exposed public keys on-chain—an outcome of Taproot’s key-path spend design—could be vulnerable to attacks leveraging Shor’s algorithm. Taproot, activated on Bitcoin back in 2021, underpins many advanced features and scaling efforts for the protocol, but its reliance on on-chain public keys creates a potential attack surface in a quantum-enabled world. P2MR addresses this by committing directly to the Merkle root of a script tree rather than relying on an internal key or tweak, preserving Taproot’s scripting flexibility while removing the key-path mechanism that could expose public keys. Devs Can Now Test Quantum‑Safe BTC Transactions BTQ’s Bitcoin Quantum testnet v0.3.0 implements full P2MR consensus rules, including SegWit version 2 outputs with bc1z (bech32m) address encoding, Merkle root commitment verification, and control block validation. The release also enables all five Dilithium post‑quantum signature opcodes within the P2MR tapscript context, providing real quantum-resistant signature verification inside the script tree. To support developer workflows, BTQ included end-to-end command-line wallet tooling and full RPC wallet support so users can perform the complete P2MR transaction flow on testnet. BTQ And CEO’s Warnings Olivier Roussy Newton, BTQ’s CEO and chairman, framed the launch as a practical advance for industry preparedness. “BIP 360 represents the Bitcoin community’s most significant step toward quantum resistance, and we’ve turned it from a proposal into running code,” he said. The company further said the testnet’s live validation—covering address creation, funding, transaction construction, signing, mempool acceptance, broadcast, and confirmation—gives implementers and auditors the chance to observe how P2MR operates end to end. It also signaled that BIP 360’s implementation is network-activated across Bitcoin Quantum’s testing environments, ensuring the feature is available to anyone participating in the testnet. Related Reading: XRP Price Projections Soar To $15-$30 On CLARITY Act Prospects And Bank Adoption However, the firm warned that waiting until a quantum-capable adversary emerges would be risky, and urged the industry to move beyond purely theoretical discussion. “The industry can’t afford to treat quantum resistance as a theoretical exercise,” Newton said, adding: BIP 360 was a landmark proposal, and we’ve turned it into a landmark implementation. Every developer, researcher, and institution that wants to understand how quantum-safe Bitcoin actually works now has a live network to test against. At the time of writing, BTC was trading at $69,534, having recorded losses of 3% in the past 24 hours after testing the $76,000 resistance wall earlier this week. Featured image from OpenArt, chart from TradingView.com
Quantum computing has become the latest all-purpose explanation for Bitcoin’s recent drawdown, but NYDIG says the numbers don’t back the narrative. In a Feb. 17 research note, NYDIG research head Greg Cipolaro argues that “quantum fears” are loud, but not a primary driver of the sell-off when you look at search behavior, cross-asset correlations, and broader risk positioning. Quantum Panic Didn’t Sink Bitcoin NYDIG frames “Cryptographically Relevant Quantum Computers” as the theoretical endgame risk investors keep circling. The problem is that market behavior doesn’t look like a repricing of an imminent existential threat. First, Cipolaro points to Google Trends. Search interest for “quantum computing bitcoin” did rise, he wrote, but the timing matters. “Search interest for ‘quantum computing bitcoin’ has risen, but notably this occurred alongside bitcoin’s rally to new all-time highs, not ahead of sustained weakness,” the note said. “In other words, heightened searches about quantum risk coincided with price strength rather than weakness. If the market were repricing bitcoin on an imminent technological threat, we would expect search intensity to lead or amplify downside risk, not accompany a period of gains.” Related Reading: Is Jane Street Manipulating Bitcoin? The Viral Theory Explained Second, NYDIG looks at how Bitcoin traded versus publicly listed quantum computing equities, specifically IONQ, QBTS, RGTI, and QUBT. If investors were rotating out of Bitcoin because quantum advances were “catching up,” you would expect quantum-linked stocks to diverge positively as Bitcoin falls. NYDIG says it saw the opposite. Bitcoin was positively correlated with those equities, and those correlations strengthened during the drawdown, suggesting a shared driver rather than a direct quantum-to-Bitcoin causality. NYDIG’s conclusion is blunt on that point. “The data provides no evidence that quantum computing is the proximate cause of bitcoin’s weakness, even if it is the dominant risk narrative at the moment,” Cipolaro wrote. “The more plausible explanation is a broader macro repricing of risk across long-duration, expectation-driven assets. Bitcoin’s recent drawdown appears more consistent with shifts in overall risk appetite than with any discrete technological catalyst.” Related Reading: Bitcoin Bearish Momentum Losing Steam? Analyst Flags Key Metric The mechanism NYDIG highlights is familiar to anyone watching liquidity regimes. Quantum computing firms, it argues, are long-duration, expectation-driven assets with minimal revenues and high EV/revenue multiples. Bitcoin, while structurally different, often trades as a long-duration bet on future adoption and monetary dynamics. When risk appetite contracts, both can get hit together. Meanwhile, NYDIG flags a divergence in derivatives markets that, in its view, better captures the current tape than quantum headlines. The 1-month annualized basis on CME has “persistently traded above” Deribit, which NYDIG uses as a proxy for onshore US institutional positioning versus offshore positioning. Structurally higher CME basis implies US desks have remained more constructive, while the sharper decline in Deribit’s 1-month basis points to rising caution offshore and reduced appetite for leveraged long exposure. At press time, Bitcoin traded at $66,886. Featured image created with DALL.E, chart from TradingView.com
While much of the market’s attention remains fixed on the Bitcoin (BTC) short-term price outlook for the remainder of the year, some early industry voices are raising a far longer-term concern — one that could introduce as much as $274 billion in potential selling pressure over the next decade. Quantum Risk Debate Grows In a recent post on social media, market expert Crypto Rover pointed to what he described as a growing conversation among early Bitcoin analysts and long-time participants in the space. According to the analysis, the warning is not coming from retail traders reacting to daily price swings. Instead, it is being discussed by so-called “OG” holders — investors who have been involved with Bitcoin since its earliest years. Related Reading: Top Expert Projects Bitcoin Bear Market To End In Less Than 365 Days The issue at the center of the debate is not macroeconomics or regulatory shifts, but quantum computing. A segment of early adopters believes that advances in quantum technology may no longer be a distant or purely theoretical risk. Within the next five to ten years, they argue, quantum systems could become powerful enough to challenge the cryptographic foundations that secure the Bitcoin network. If quantum machines were able to break or significantly weaken that encryption, older wallets — particularly those using early-generation security standards — could become vulnerable. The concern is not that Bitcoin’s network is currently weak, but that a sufficiently advanced quantum breakthrough could expose dormant coins whose private keys were once thought secure. This is where the potential supply shock comes into focus. Potential Return Of Early-Era Bitcoin An estimated 4 million BTC from Bitcoin’s early years, particularly before 2011, are considered inactive or lost. Markets generally treat those coins as permanently out of circulation, effectively reducing Bitcoin’s usable supply. However, Rover asserts that if quantum computing were ever able to unlock even a portion of those wallets, that supply could theoretically return to the market. To understand the magnitude of such a shift, Rover points to recent history. Since 2020, institutions and corporations have collectively accumulated roughly 3 million BTC, which played a key role in driving BTC from $10,000 to peak levels above $120,000. Related Reading: XRP Outlook Slashed: Standard Chartered Lowers Forecast From $8 To $2 The expert warns that if 4 million Bitcoin were suddenly viewed as potentially liquid supply, it would represent a long-term overhang far exceeding the scale of recent institutional accumulation. However, Rover highlighted that quantum computing does not represent an imminent danger to Bitcoin’s security. The technology is continuously evolving, and there is no confirmed ability to break modern cryptographic standards at scale. BTC was trading at roughly $67,800 at the time of writing, representing a 2.6% decrease over the previous seven days, according to CoinGecko data. Featured image from OpenArt, chart from TradingView.com