The rapidly developing quantum computing poses a potential threat to Bitcoin. However, Tether CEO Paolo Ardoino stated that this threat is still far off and will not change its total supply.
When quantum technology is ready, users who still have access to their wallets will move coins to "quantum-resistant" addresses, which keep their assets safe.
In such a scenario, only Bitcoin in wallets that are truly lost or inaccessible, including around 1 million BTC believed to belong to Satoshi, could potentially be hacked and circulated again.
Crypto Trader Skull supports this view, asserting that Bitcoin's cryptography could evolve before that threat arrives.
Satoshi's early wallets, containing about 1.1 million BTC, are considered very secure because Bitcoin's cryptographic protection remains strong.
Although most of Satoshi's addresses use an old format that displays the public key on the blockchain, the security of ECDSA with the secp256k1 curve still provides an equivalent level of 128-bit protection. This makes brute-forcing the private key practically impossible.
There has been no historical bug that ever leaked Satoshi's private keys, and even a hypothetical super-fast computer would take longer than the age of the universe to guess them. The most realistic threat is a quantum computer, as Shor's algorithm can break ECDSA.
However, the quantum technology needed is still very far away, requiring millions of physical qubits that have not yet been achieved. The estimated real threat may only emerge between 2029 and 2033. If a large quantum computer truly appears, not only Satoshi's wallet will be at risk, but the entire old Bitcoin addresses.
At that point, the network will almost certainly perform an emergency upgrade. Thus, Satoshi can only be hacked if a significant quantum leap occurs and Bitcoin fails to adapt, two things that are very unlikely to happen simultaneously.
