The asset management company downplays fears about quantum computers that would threaten the Bitcoin network.
According to CoinShares, only a small fraction of bitcoins appears to be held in wallets vulnerable to quantum computer attacks. In a post published Friday, Christopher Bendiksen, CoinShares’ head of Bitcoin research, argued that only 10,230 bitcoins out of 1.63 million bitcoins are located in addresses with publicly visible cryptographic keys vulnerable to quantum attacks.
According to Bendiksen’s analysis, just over 7,000 bitcoins are held in wallets with 100-1,000 BTC, while approximately 3,233 bitcoins are in wallets with 1,000-10,000 BTC, equivalent to $719.1 million at current market prices. The remaining 1.62 million bitcoins are stored in wallets with less than 100 BTC, which according to the researcher would require a millennium each to crack, even in the “most optimistic scenario of technological progression in quantum computing.” The key point is that most of the potentially exposed bitcoin isn’t sitting in a handful of giant, juicy targets. It’s scattered across more than 32,000 separate chunks of coins, and each chunk averages about 50 BTC.
Bendiksen explained that these “theoretical risks” stem from quantum algorithms such as Shor‘s, which could compromise Bitcoin’s elliptic curve signatures, and Grover‘s, which could weaken the Secure Hash Algorithm 256-bit (SHA-256). However, he argued that neither quantum algorithm could alter Bitcoin’s 21 million supply limit or bypass proof-of-work.
The issue has divided the Bitcoin community between those advocating for implementing a quantum-resistant hard fork and those preferring to wait. Bendiksen shares the views of figures like Strategy’s Michael Saylor and Blockstream’s Adam Back, who consider quantum threats overblown, stating that Bitcoin is “far from dangerous territory.” He emphasized that compromising Bitcoin’s cryptography would require millions of fault-tolerant qubits, currently far beyond the 105 qubits achieved by Google’s latest quantum computer, Willow.
“To break current asymmetric cryptography, one would need something in the order of millions of qubits,” Ledger CTO Charles Guillemet told CoinShares. “Willow, Google’s current computer, is 105 qubits. And as soon as you add one more qubit, it becomes exponentially more difficult to maintain the coherence system.”
Other experts like Capriole Investments’ Charles Edwards consider quantum computing a potential “existential threat” to Bitcoin, arguing that an immediate upgrade is necessary to strengthen the network’s security. Edwards has stated that Bitcoin could be revalued upward once a solution is implemented, which some researchers like Blockstream’s Jonas Nick suggest could involve adopting post-quantum signatures.
