Debunking the Bitcoin Quantum Threat Doomsday Theory! CoinShares: Only about 10,000 BTC are truly at risk

Will quantum computers become the “Bitcoin ender”? Digital asset management firm CoinShares released a research report on February 6th, directly debunking these “exaggerated” doomsday predictions and emphasizing that the quantum threat is not an urgent issue.

Will quantum computers become the “Bitcoin ender”? This long-standing shadow over investors’ minds has recently reignited fears due to a research report. However, CoinShares, a digital asset management company, published a report on February 6th that directly dispels these “exaggerated” doomsday predictions, stressing that the quantum threat is not an immediate crisis but a foreseeable and manageable engineering challenge.

The controversy began when Chaincode Labs previously estimated that nearly 20% to 50% of circulating Bitcoin could be at risk of “breaking private keys” via quantum technology. In response, CoinShares’ research director Christopher Bendiksen refuted this, stating that such estimates are too rough and confuse risks at different levels.

After analyzing blockchain underlying data, CoinShares found:

• Early Bitcoin address formats (P2PK) are limited in proportion: Only old addresses that used “Pay-to-Public-Key” format directly, where the public key has been publicly available on the chain for a long time, are theoretically vulnerable. Currently, about 1.6 million Bitcoins (8% of the total supply) are stored in these addresses.
• Actual threat is minimal: Of these 1.6 million Bitcoins, only about 10,200 are held in large addresses, enough to impact the market if hacked. The remaining Bitcoins are scattered across over 32,000 unspent transaction outputs (UTXOs), with an average of about 50 Bitcoins per UTXO.

CoinShares points out that even under a “highly optimistic” assumption of quantum technology progress, cracking these keys one by one would take an extremely long time, making it practically infeasible; as for the claim that “25% of Bitcoin faces a quantum threat,” most of this includes risks from human errors like address reuse. These risks can be easily mitigated through updated operational practices.

Notably, Jefferies strategist Christopher Wood in January cited Chaincode Labs’ high-risk estimate, completely liquidating 10% of his Bitcoin holdings in his investment portfolio, describing quantum computing as a “survival threat that shakes the foundation of Bitcoin’s store of value.”

CoinShares explicitly denies the notion that the “quantum threat is imminent.”

Christopher Bendiksen cites public research indicating that to reverse-engineer a Bitcoin public key within 24 hours, a fault-tolerant quantum computer would need 13 million physical qubits—equivalent to 100,000 times the power of the world’s most powerful quantum computer today. To do it within an hour, the required computing power would be over 3 million times current capabilities.

Ledger CTO Charles Guillemet also stated:

“To crack current asymmetric encryption systems, at least several million qubits are needed.” Google’s current quantum computer, Willow, has only 105 qubits, and each additional qubit exponentially increases the difficulty of maintaining system stability.

In terms of defense strategies, opinions in the crypto space vary. Some radical factions suggest using “soft forks” to directly destroy vulnerable Bitcoin. CoinShares firmly opposes this, believing it severely violates Bitcoin’s core promise of protecting private property.

“Destroying Bitcoin that isn’t yours is completely contrary to Bitcoin’s spirit,” Bendiksen emphasized. Conversely, encryption expert Adam Back remains optimistic, believing Bitcoin can gradually adopt “post-quantum signatures” and continue evolving defensively to counter threats.

Meanwhile, Strategy CEO Michael Saylor dismisses the “quantum threat” as FUD (fear, uncertainty, doubt) in the crypto community. At the same time, Ethereum co-founder Vitalik Buterin is actively preparing, having established a dedicated anti-quantum security team.

CoinShares concludes by reassuring institutional investors that the quantum risk is currently manageable and that there is ample time to address it.

• This article is reprinted with permission from: BlockCast
• Original title: “Debunking the ‘Quantum Doomsday’! CoinShares: Only 10,200 Bitcoins Face Actual Risk”
• Original author: Block Sister MEL