Bitcoin faces existential threat from quantum computers, according to some experts. With the passage of time, researchers have voiced growing concerns that hackers could utilize these powerful processors to decrypt the cryptographic functions that protect Bitcoin.
David McAlvany, the CEO of gold app Vaulted, believes that Bitcoin could be gone in four years because of quantum computing.
However, he also noted that no such computer exists, and the timeline could be as short as two months or as long as five years.
This concern revolves around the fact that some Bitcoin addresses have already been exposed on the blockchain. Galaxy Digital research published in March 2026 suggests that 7,000,000 Bitcoin, valued at around $470 billion, are located in addresses with public keys exposed on-chain.
Meanwhile, Glassnode estimates this amount at 6,040,000 Bitcoin, or 30.2% of the crypto asset’s supply. It should be noted that these are merely estimates, not actual figures stated by the protocol. Galaxy Digital downplays the risk, noting that it is real but not existential.
Exposure in this case means that the Bitcoin private keys were not actually stolen, but rather their owners have made them publicly available. The danger arises if a quantum computer manages to find a way to decrypt these private keys using the exposed public keys.
Quantum computers’ rise and their impact on security have caused many to reconsider the threat they pose to Bitcoin. Google researcher Craig Gidney predicted in May 2025 that it would take fewer than one million qubits to decrypt RSA-2048. A Google team’s white paper that appeared in April 2026 suggested that about 500,000 qubits would be needed to decrypt Bitcoin’s elliptic-curve cryptography. Ethereum Foundation researcher Justin Drake has estimated the probability of a quantum computer extracting a Bitcoin key from an exposed public key to be 10% by 2032.
Bitcoin developers are working on solutions to this problem. BIP-360 suggests that a new quantum-resistant address type be created, while BIP-361 calls for a two-step deprecation of legacy signatures. The process under BIP-361 would see Bitcoin that fail to adopt new cryptographic standards become unspendable, including the estimated 2.28 million BTC belonging to Satoshi Nakamoto.
American Fortress has raised $8 million and is working on a standard that would give blockchain-based assets quantum resistance.
The company’s technical paper is not yet published, and its design has not been publicly audited.
In general, the debate illustrates the potential implications of the race between Bitcoin and quantum computing, as well as the ability of other blockchains to adapt in time. Although the infrastructure needed to steal these encrypted keys does not yet exist, researchers and developers are nonetheless thinking about ways to protect exposed assets.
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