Quantum Computing and Crypto: Can Bitcoin Survive the Quantum Threat?

More than a decade after the first Bitcoin was mined, cryptocurrency is on the precipice of a new, unprecedented trial: the rise of quantum computing. Since Google announced their new state-of-the-art quantum chip, Willow, the internet has been abuzz with speculations as to when, not if, the paths of quantum computing and crypto are finally going to collide and what sort of fallout to expect.

There’s no denying that quantum computers becoming mainstream will have game-changing implications for cryptography, including blockchain technology as a whole. But is quantum computing a threat to Bitcoin? Could it be that the crypto industry, including giants like Bybit, Binance, and Kraken, is living on borrowed time?

Let’s put a lid on the fearmongering and set the record straight! Find out what challenges quantum computers will pose for crypto and how blockchain technology must evolve to meet them.

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How Do Quantum Computers Work?

For many people in the debate of quantum computing and crypto, the first thing that springs to mind when they hear “quantum” is a collection of memes – in pop science circles, the term has become synonymous with a concept or area of study that’s supposedly so incomprehensible that even experts have trouble untangling it.

With that in mind, rather than trying to explain exactly what quantum computers are, I’ll go with outlining their benefits compared to “traditional” computers. The computers we use today run on the binary system: all the data is encoded in bits (short for binary digits – the smallest units of information) consisting of 1s and 0s.

This is a bit like Schrödinger's cat: until you open the box, it’s simultaneously alive and dead.

Qubits are linked together in a way where the state of one qubit instantly affects another, no matter how far apart they are from each other (a phenomenon called “entanglement”).

In a nutshell, these two characteristics allow quantum computers to perform multiple calculations at once and process large amounts of data much faster than traditional computers.

And when I say “much faster”, I mean a difference that’s downright mind-bending. Just to give you some concrete numbers to chew on: Google’s new Willow chip can solve certain computing problems in less than 5 minutes that would take the world's best supercomputers roughly 10 septillion years to complete, which is longer than the age of the universe itself.

What’s the Deal With Quantum Computing and Crypto?

Those familiar with the technological underpinnings of blockchain can probably glimpse the implications already, hence the growing number of worried Google searches along the lines of, “Will quantum computers break Bitcoin?”.

Let’s get to the bottom of the issue right here and now. What exactly is the link between crypto and quantum computing, and are they really at odds with each other?

The Use of Cryptography in Blockchain

At its very core, blockchain technology relies on cryptography, the science of securing information and communications through the use of mathematical algorithms. Those algorithms are essential to securing the decentralized ledger on which blockchain transactions are recorded and ensuring its transparency.

Cryptography plays a role at every level: hashing algorithms (such as Bitcoin’s SHA-256 hash function used in its Proof-of-Work consensus mechanism) encode data in the blockchain, while cryptographic digital signatures verify the transactions on the network or smart contracts.

Cryptography is also essential in crypto mining: miners compete to solve complex cryptographic equations, and the first to solve the equation gets the right to add a new block to the blockchain and earn rewards.

To get a bit more granular, cryptocurrency uses something called “asymmetric cryptography” to generate a pair of keys: a public key and a private key that both have a mathematical relation between them. The private key is used to create a digital signature whenever a transaction occurs, and this signature can be verified by anyone with the corresponding public key.

Meanwhile, the public key can be easily derived from the private key, but not the other way around. As the name implies, the private key must remain confidential – it authorizes access to your crypto wallet and its contents. Bitcoin, for instance, uses an asymmetric cryptographic algorithm called the Elliptic Curve Digital Signature Algorithm (ECDSA) for this purpose.

📚 Read More: Blockchain Security: Why It Matters

The Threat Explained

As you can see, if solving mathematical problems is the security backbone of blockchain, quantum computing stands to completely undermine it – and, by extension, render cryptocurrency unusable. So, between quantum computing VS blockchain, who wins?

The main way quantum computing could compromise cryptocurrency is by letting someone retrieve the private key from the public key. With current computers, the algorithm required for this “reverse” decryption (as I mentioned, the intended direction is the other way around) would take such an astronomical amount of time to perform that it’s simply not practical.

However, the theoretical prerequisite for this risk already exists. As early as 1994, the mathematician Peter Shor created a quantum algorithm that could break the most common algorithms of asymmetric cryptography. All that’s needed is a sufficient amount of computing power.

On top of that, another quantum algorithm, Grover’s algorithm, can reduce the time needed to brute-force cryptographic keys. It uses quantum mechanics to explore many possibilities at once, which gives it the ability to search through an unsorted list much faster than a regular algorithm could.

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Is Bitcoin in Danger?

Now that you have a broad picture of the risks quantum computers pose to blockchain as a whole, it’s time to get more specific. After all, cryptocurrencies aren’t all created equal. For some, the stakes are much higher than for others. What about quantum computing and Bitcoin, for instance?

How Secure Are Bitcoin Wallet Addresses?

Just like with other cryptocurrencies, the main danger of quantum computing and Bitcoin is enabling bad actors to steal the owners’ private keys and, by extension, their holdings. When it comes to our favorite OG crypto, however, there are a few nuances to take into account.

For the sake of simplicity, let’s look at the most common type of Bitcoin transactions: person-to-person payments. This type of transaction involves two parties: the sender, who transfers their funds from their wallet to another one, and the recipient, who receives them.

P2P Bitcoin transactions themselves can be divided into two categories, each one at risk of quantum computing from a different angle.

In the first one, called Pay-to-Public-Key (P2PK), the public key itself serves as the wallet address. It dates back to the early days of Bitcoin: many of the first coins mined in 2009 by Bitcoin’s creator, Satoshi Nakamoto, are still stored in this type of wallet address.

It fell out of fashion for being too unwieldy. These addresses are very long, making for a larger transaction file and consequently taking more time to process. On top of that, they lack a mechanism to detect mistyping.

The main issue that makes them particularly vulnerable to quantum computing, however, is that the address directly reveals the public key, which could then be used to hack the private key with the help of quantum algorithms.

In the second category, called Pay-to-Public-Key-Hash (P2PKH), the sender pays to an address that’s created by hashing the recipient’s public key. This hash is a unique, fixed-length code that helps keep the transaction secure. Aside from solving the address length and mistyping issues, it keeps the public key hidden.

Here comes the catch, though. The public key is still inevitably revealed at the moment of transaction, meaning that a P2PKH address only keeps it hidden as long as it’s never been used to transfer funds. That’s why the best crypto wallets today automatically generate a new address for every transaction to avoid reusing the same address twice. This measure is necessary to ensure maximum security and privacy for transactions.

How Many Bitcoins Could Get Stolen?

At this point, it’s clear that the most relevant question is no longer, “Is quantum computing a threat to Bitcoin?” but rather, to what extent?

Let’s take a look at Bitcoin’s two major algorithms I mentioned earlier. The SHA-256 hashing function that ensures the integrity of the network is, apparently, not much at risk. Even if Grover’s algorithm could theoretically accelerate the mining process, the PoW mechanism would still remain relatively secure, especially with some modifications.

ECDSA, on the other hand, is vulnerable to Shor’s algorithm, which can solve the elliptic curve discrete logarithm problem fast enough to be a viable tool for attackers trying to uncover private keys from public keys.

As I explained earlier, the Bitcoins that are vulnerable to this type of attack include all the ones that are stored in P2PK addresses and the ones stored in reused P2PKH addresses.

According to the current data, the number of coins in P2PK addresses has stayed more or less the same from 2009 to now, roughly 2 million. This likely means they were generated through mining and have never been moved from their original address.

The number of coins in P2PKH addresses, on the other hand, has been growing ever since 2010, when this type of address was first introduced and is now the dominant type of address. From 2010 to 2014, the number of Bitcoins in reused P2PKH addresses steadily increased. But from that point, it started to fall as more people followed the practice of not reusing the same wallet address.

Nevertheless, as of writing this, the amount of Bitcoins stored in reused P2PKH addresses is ~2.5 million.

To muddy the waters even further, the distinction between “safe” and “unsafe” Bitcoins is more blurry than that. Is Bitcoin quantum-resistant as long as it’s stored in an unused P2PKH address? Broadly speaking, yes, but the solution isn’t simply to move all Bitcoins from P2PK and used P2PKH addresses to a brand new P2PKH address.

For one thing, many Bitcoin holders have long since lost their private keys. We’ve all heard of someone who bought some Bitcoins between 2009 and 2012 as a joke and then spent countless hours trying to recover their wallet years later when the value of the coin ballooned into quadruple digits, usually to no avail.

Even if every Bitcoin holder does recover their funds, trying to move them to the safe refuge of an unused P2PKH address would, ironically, expose them to risk at that very moment.

During the window of time between initiating a transaction and the transaction being mined, a quantum computer-wielding attacker would have an opportunity to see your public key, use it to derive your private key, and then initiate a competing transaction to their own address.

What would follow is essentially a race between quantum computing and crypto. Today, one Bitcoin transaction takes about 10 minutes to go through. However, if the network is congested, it could take ~30 minutes or even longer.

Transaction fees are another factor. During these “traffic jams”, transactions with higher fees get prioritized over the cheaper ones. The attacker would, of course, try to outcompete the original transaction by offering a higher fee.

How does quantum computing stack up against these numbers, then? It’s hard to give a definitive answer, but the current estimations suggest that it would take a quantum computer about 8 hours to break the RSA algorithm used to encrypt the private key, and then another 30 minutes to hack a Bitcoin signature.

In principle, then, is Bitcoin quantum-resistant as long as it takes quantum computers more time to decode the private key than it does for the Bitcoin transaction to be confirmed? Basically, yes. Even though the odds may look good right now, it’s only a matter of time before the doom scenario of quantum computing VS blockchain endgame becomes a real possibility.

Why Crypto Is Still Safe (for Now)

If what we’re headed for is essentially an arms race between quantum computing and cryptocurrency, what sort of timeline are we looking at? Can Bitcoin be hacked by quantum computers sooner than we think?

For perspective, Google’s Willow chip is currently capable of putting out 105 qubits – a staggering amount compared to standard computers, but still a far cry from the target in question.

Nevertheless, the clock is ticking. In 2017, a group of researchers came out with a statement that, according to their most optimistic estimates, quantum computers could break the elliptic curve signature scheme used by Bitcoin by mid-2030s.^[1]

Looking at it now, the prediction might be out of date, but the message itself is still eerily prescient. IBM has unveiled an ambitious roadmap to build a quantum chip with the power of 100,000 qubits by 2033.

The company already holds the lead in the race with its 433-qubit Osprey processor, introduced in 2022. The following year’s upgrade, Condor, upped the ante with a 1,121-qubit quantum chip.

The most recent addition to the lineup, Heron, was a breakthrough in error reduction. This upgrade resolves major bottlenecks in the commercial of quantum computers, as qubits are highly sensitive to tiny environmental challenges like temperature shifts or vibrations. Thanks to the upgrade to the model, the company has strengthened its foothold on the roadmap.

IBM is not the only player in this race, however. PsiQuantum has announced a plan to develop a quantum chip of 1 million photonic qubits within the same timeframe. Intel, Amazon, Xanadu, and a number of other industry leaders have entered the game, too.

📚 Read More: Mastering Cryptocurrency Security

Can Cryptocurrency Be Quantum-Proofed?

Even though quantum computers are not quite there yet, the above-mentioned timeline is, without a doubt, a wake-up call. Will quantum computers break Bitcoin by 2030, as some predictions claim? We can’t know for sure, but the question still stands: is there anything we can do to prepare for the inevitable future where quantum computing and crypto will collide?

To protect the blockchain, quantum computing has to be countered head-on by developing and applying new types of cryptographic systems (let's discuss a few examples).

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Post-Quantum Cryptography

Today, most widely used public key algorithms rely on the difficulty of one of these three mathematical problems:

• Integer factorization problem;
• Discrete logarithm problem;
• Elliptic-curve discrete logarithm problem.

Assuming that all of these could be easily solved with a sufficiently powerful quantum computer running Shor’s algorithm, what we need are superior alternatives that present much more of a mathematical challenge.

Most research on quantum computing and cryptography has identified six potential approaches:

• Lattice-Based Cryptography: This system relies on the difficulty of solving mathematical problems in multidimensional grids, or "lattices," such as the "shortest vector problem," where the goal is to find the shortest path between two points. Even with a quantum computer, solving this is basically infeasible because of the grid's complexity.
• Hash-Based Cryptography: It uses cryptographic hash functions to create secure systems, like digital signatures. A hash function converts data into a fixed-size output (a "digital fingerprint") in a way that is practically irreversible.
• Code-Based Cryptography: This approach is based on error-correcting codes – that is, systems designed to detect and fix errors in data transmission. In cryptography, these codes are used to create encryption schemes that rely on the difficulty of decoding without the proper key.

• Multivariate Cryptography: This type of cryptography uses complex multivariate problems (equations with multiple variables). Solving these equations becomes exponentially harder as the number of variables increases.
• Isogeny-Based Cryptography: Built on the concept of elliptic curves (similar to current ECDSA), it uses the idea of isogenies – special pathways or mappings between different elliptic curves. Finding these mappings and breaking them would take a massive amount of time for a quantum computer.
• Symmetric Key Quantum Resistance: This system uses the same key for encrypting and decrypting data. Where quantum computers are concerned, simply increasing the key size can make symmetric cryptography secure against brute-force attacks.

Out of these six techniques, lattice-based cryptography currently stands out as the most promising. It’s versatile enough to be applicable to a wide range of cryptographic tasks, including public key encryption, the creation of digital signatures, and zero-knowledge proofs.

It’s also already being adopted by organizations and researchers trying to develop quantum-safe cryptocurrency. The technique has been the focus of the NIST Post-Quantum Cryptography Standardization Project, which is working to define the cryptographic standards of the future.

Quantum-Safe Future for Bitcoin

These new cryptographic approaches represent a hopeful future for cryptocurrency, but what is their relevance to the number one most popular coin? Is Bitcoin quantum-resistant enough as it currently stands, or could its security be improved using the above-mentioned systems?

Without beating around the bush, Bitcoin is certainly not 100% immune to quantum attacks in the future. And, yes, its protocol could be upgraded to give it a much higher degree of quantum-proofing.

As you’ve probably guessed, though, it’s not as simple as it sounds. For one thing, Bitcoin’s decentralized nature constitutes quite a hurdle when it comes to passing any major changes. It would require approval from a majority group within the network, which would hardly be smooth sailing given its numerous factions and varied interests.

Let’s not forget the timing is key, too: the longer the decision is delayed, the greater the threat Bitcoin is exposed to. Unfortunately, time is precisely the number one factor working against Bitcoin here.

And that’s the most optimistic estimate. In a more realistic scenario, where Bitcoin would designate 25% of its servers to the update and allow its users to continue mining and trading at a slower rate in the meantime, the downtime would take about 305 days and cost ~$3.66 billion! 

Top 5 Quantum-Resistant Crypto Coins in 2025

It’s hard to imagine a world where Bitcoin isn’t the main player anymore. That said, the future where quantum computing and crypto will finally collide is still distant enough that its crypto landscape might be unrecognizable from the one we know today. If the question “Can Bitcoin be hacked by quantum computers?” can’t be answered with a definitive “No”, the community might eventually move on to better alternatives.

You might be surprised to hear that such quantum-safe cryptocurrency already exists. Here are the top five coins for the post-quantum crypto era.

Algorand (ALGO)

Founded in 2017 by Silvio Micali, a computer scientist and professor at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), Algorand leads the way in the category of quantum-safe cryptocurrency. Its standout feature is post-quantum digital signature technology called FALCON.

This coin cryptographically signs its blockchain history every 256 blocks to ensure that its past transactions remain secure from quantum attacks. Unfortunately, though, it doesn’t yet have a mechanism to secure future transactions the same way.

Algorand is currently trading at $0.2 to $0.3 per token with a market cap of over $1.8 billion. You can get it on Binance, Bybit, or Coinbase.

📚 Read More: A List of the Best Crypto to Watch Out

Quantum Resistant Ledger (QRL)

With a name that certainly aims to inspire trust, QRL utilizes XMSS (eXtended Merkle Signature Scheme) for unparalleled security against quantum threats. It focuses on quantum-proofing every aspect of the blockchain, from transaction signatures to the ledger itself.

The QRL ecosystem as a whole is designed to be “fully quantum-resistant”, according to its creators. Its cryptographic methods are vetted and standardized by leading organizations like the IETF (Internet Engineering Task Force).

Quantum Resistant Ledger’s native token, QRL, is now trading at $0.3 to $0.4 on exchanges like MEXC. Its market cap has reached $25+ million.

Hedera (HBAR)

Hedera features an innovative SHA-384 algorithm, which provides a level of cryptographic security that even the most powerful quantum computers aren’t likely to infiltrate. Additionally, it follows the same CNSA (Commercial National Security Algorithm) standard used by the US government to protect its top-secret information.

The company behind the coin has recently announced an integration into the upcoming SpaceX satellite launch. These next-generation WISeSat satellites are equipped with SEALSQ’s post-quantum chips, providing an unprecedented level of security against quantum threats for IoT devices.

As of writing, HBAR costs $0.1 to $0.2 and has a market cap of over $7.8 billion. You’ll find it on Bybit, Binance, and KuCoin.

Cellframe (CELL)

Cellframe is a scalable, open-source blockchain platform built from the ground up with quantum resistance in mind. It offers integrated variable post-quantum encryption, implemented in a way that supports multiple quantum-resistant signatures simultaneously.

On top of that, it permits blazing-fast and frictionless network upgrades to keep up to date with the newest innovations in quantum computing.

The network's native token, CELL, has a total supply of 37+ million tokens and is currently trading at around $0.3. You can find it on BitMart and MEXC.

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Mochimo (MCM)

This coin promises “a complete reimplementation of blockchain” for the post-quantum era. Mochimo utilizes WOTS+, a one-time signature scheme approved by the EU-funded PQCrypto research organization.

It also boasts a ​​custom tagging feature that allows overly long quantum-resistant wallet addresses to be labeled with a short and easily memorable tag that takes up only 12 bytes.

MCM has a circulating supply of 28,000,800 coins. It is currently trading at around $0.05.

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Conclusions

The intersection of quantum computing and crypto will undoubtedly be a challenging chapter in the history of blockchain. With their capacity to perform complex mathematical equations in record time and steal private keys that protect access to crypto wallets, quantum computers threaten the very fabric of cryptocurrency.

Fortunately for us, this technology is still years away from posing a legitimate risk. In the meantime, researchers are already developing new cryptographic approaches that could be used to quantum-proof crypto coins.

That said, upgrading existing cryptocurrencies like Bitcoin will be no easy task. It’s likely that, by the dreaded 2030 estimate, new tokens will have emerged that are better equipped to deal with quantum attacks from the get-go.

The content published on this website is not aimed to give any kind of financial, investment, trading, or any other form of advice. BitDegree.org does not endorse or suggest you to buy, sell or hold any kind of cryptocurrency. Before making financial investment decisions, do consult your financial advisor.

Scientific References

1. Aggarwal D., Brennen G. K., Lee T., Santha M., Tomamichel M.: 'Quantum attacks on Bitcoin, and how to protect against them';

2. Pont J., Kearney J., Moyler J., Perez-Delgado C.: 'Downtime Required for Bitcoin Quantum-Safety'.