Disproving the "Quantum Doomsday" theory! CoinShares: Only "10,200 Bitcoins" face actual risk

Will “Quantum Computers” Become the “Bitcoin Ender”? This long-standing shadow hovering over investors has recently reignited fears due to a research report. However, digital asset management firm CoinShares released a report on February 6th that directly debunks these “exaggerated” doomsday predictions, emphasizing that the quantum threat is not an urgent 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 face risks from quantum technology “breaking private keys.” In response, CoinShares’ research director Christopher Bendiksen refuted this, stating that such estimates are too rough and confuse risks at different levels. After an in-depth analysis of blockchain underlying data, CoinShares found:

• Limited proportion of early Bitcoin address formats (P2PK): Only old addresses that used the “Pay-to-Public-Key” format directly in early days are theoretically vulnerable, as their public keys have been publicly available on the chain for a long time. Currently, about 1.6 million Bitcoins (8% of the total supply) are stored in these addresses.
• Minimal actual threat: Of these 1.6 million Bitcoins, only about 10,200 are concentrated 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 on exchanges, which 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 firmly denies the notion that “quantum threats are imminent.” Christopher Bendiksen cited publicly available research indicating that to reverse-engineer a Bitcoin public key within 24 hours, a fault-tolerant quantum computer would need 13 million “physical qubits,” which is 100,000 times more powerful than the world’s most powerful quantum computer today; to do so within an hour, the required computing power would be over 3 million times the current capacity. Ledger’s CTO Charles Guillemet also stated:

“To crack current asymmetric encryption systems, at least ‘millions of 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, there are differing opinions in the crypto community. Some radical factions suggest using “soft forks” to directly destroy Bitcoin vulnerable to quantum attacks. CoinShares strongly 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,” emphasized Christopher Bendiksen. Conversely, encryption expert Adam Back remains optimistic, believing Bitcoin can gradually adopt “post-quantum signatures” and continue evolving defensively to counter threats. Meanwhile, Strategy’s Chairman Michael Saylor dismisses the “quantum threat” as a “FUD (Fear, Uncertainty, Doubt)” parade in the crypto space. At the same time, Ethereum co-founder Vitalik Buterin is actively preparing, having established a dedicated anti-quantum security team.