Eli Naggar, CEO of Brains, published an analysis of quantum threats to Bitcoin on April 12 of this year, in which he primarily concluded, “When we started this study, we were hoping to conclude that it’s okay, it’s been decades.” “We can’t say that anymore.”
The manager’s review covered aspects such as recent impacts; paper We arrive at our results by considering Google’s existing solution proposals and the current state of quantum hardware.
What specifically changed his perspective was paper From Google. Before reading it, Nagar wanted to confirm that Bitcoin has decades of preparation. he paperHowever, it has been revealed that the resources required to compromise Bitcoin encryption have been reduced by a factor of 20 compared to previous estimates, and the attack can be carried out in approximately 9 minutes, which is less than the average block confirmation time.
For Nagar, this combination of requiring less hardware and reducing attack time meant the investigation didn’t have the reassuring conclusion it had hoped to end with.
According to executives, approx. 6.9 million BTC (approximately $500 billion) of public keys leaked They are on-chain and vulnerable to quantum attacks, such as Satoshi-era coins in the form of payment-for-public-key (P2PK) and Taproot (P2TR) addresses that are designed to directly publish public keys. All this adds up to more than 16 million addresses with public keys.
Regarding the anti-quantum solutions currently used in Bitcoin, the Brains CEO highlighted BIP-360 as the most complete long-term proposal, but said: Requires community consensus and years of implementation.
He also mentioned QSB (Quantum Safe Bitcoin), a scheme that protects transactions and works with current Bitcoin rules. without using a fork (soft fork)although it is not yet operational.
debate between two camps
As reported by CriptoNoticias, the potential risks that quantum computing poses to Bitcoin create opposition. Meanwhile, analysts and experts like Blockstream co-founder Adam Back, JAN3 CEO Samson Mow, and the ARK Invest team place quantum risk somewhere between the two. 10 years, 20 years ahead.
In contrast, Ethereum co-founder Vitalik Buterin and Capriol Investments CEO Charles Edwards predicted that this threat could materialize in 2028. Announced aiming for 2029 Companies like Cloudflare and Grayscale have aligned themselves with that timeline as they aim to transition their infrastructure to post-quantum cryptography. Nagal joins the second camp after an investigation.
As such, the theoretical risks that quantum poses to Bitcoin and digital systems are framed in tension, while experts and companies debate when “Q-Day” will arrive.
(Tag translation) Bitcoin (BTC)
