I just came across a survey from the Global Risk Institute that puts a timeline on the quantum computing threat. Out of 26 experts polled in 2025, more than half gave at least a 50% probability of a cryptographically relevant quantum computer (CRQC) arriving within 3–5 years. That’s not science fiction anymore it’s a planning horizon.
For Bitcoin, this matters. A CRQC could theoretically break the elliptic curve digital signatures that protect most wallets. But the risk isn’t uniform. According to researchers, the immediate vulnerability is limited to old‑style P2PK addresses (pay‑to‑public‑key) that expose their public keys on the blockchain. These include Satoshi’s stash and roughly 1.7 million BTC sitting in such addresses. Modern wallets (P2WPKH, P2TR) that only reveal public keys when spending are much safer.
From my point of view, this gives Bitcoin a 3–5 year window to prepare not to rewrite the code (that’s the easy part), but to achieve social consensus on how to handle the vulnerable coins. Do we freeze them? Blacklist them? Encourage owners to migrate? The technical fix (quantum‑resistant signatures) exists, but upgrading a decentralized network of tens of thousands of nodes is a governance nightmare.
The good news is that the clock isn’t ticking for most users. If you keep your Bitcoin in a modern address and don’t reuse addresses, you’re fine for the foreseeable future. But for the ecosystem as a whole, the quantum threat is real and the Global Risk Institute’s survey suggests it’s coming sooner than many think. We’ve got a few years to figure it out. The debate needs to start now, not after the first CRQC is announced.
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