So yesterday I read a pretty interesting CoinShares report about the quantum threat to Bitcoin. It turns out that the concerns often circulating in the community are somewhat exaggerated compared to reality.

When hearing news about quantum computing and Bitcoin, people usually panic immediately. But CoinShares has a different perspective. They say that out of about 1.6 million BTC stored in old P2PK addresses (about 8% of the total supply), only a small portion could really pose a major problem in the market. Specifically, they estimate only around 10,200 BTC are concentrated enough that if stolen, they could cause significant market shocks.

Now, this is interesting. The rest is spread across more than 32,000 different UTXOs, each averaging about 50 BTC. So if a quantum attacker tries to, they would have to hack each of those coins one by one, rather than just stealing from one large address and fleeing with the proceeds that could move the price. The job becomes much more complicated, slower, and less profitable.

From a technical standpoint, CoinShares says that to truly break Bitcoin's cryptography, a quantum computer would need to be error-tolerant and roughly 100,000 times more powerful than the largest existing machine. That’s a very large number. For context, Google has Willow with 105 qubits, but breaking Bitcoin’s keys would require millions of qubits. So the timeline is probably still far off, at least a decade into the future.

According to CoinShares, there are signs that the number of vulnerabilities theoretically possible is much larger than what can actually be compromised on a large scale. The often-cited narrative claims that 20-50% of Bitcoin could be at risk, but this report provides a more accurate picture with smaller figures for the actual risk.

What I notice is that this isn’t a new debate in the Bitcoin community. But concerns about quantum computing are starting to trend again with volatile prices. People are beginning to look for structural risks to blame. Last month, CoinDesk also reported that most Bitcoin developers see quantum computing as a distant issue, not an urgent problem.

However, there are critics who argue that the problem isn’t the timeline but the lack of clear preparedness. Especially as governments and major tech companies start deploying quantum-resistant systems. There’s a proposal like BIP-360 aimed at introducing a new wallet format for gradual migration, but a gap is beginning to appear between developers and institutional capital that want a clearer long-term plan.

In conclusion, CoinShares argues that the quantum risk isn’t an urgent crisis but a long-term engineering challenge that Bitcoin can address through gradual adoption of post-quantum signatures. Larger figures for the technical timeline, smaller figures for the actual market risk.

Currently, BTC is struggling to maintain momentum, briefly touching $76K but back to around $74K. The funding rate on Bitcoin perpetuals has been negative for 46 days, indicating a still-strong bearish sentiment. But from the quantum threat angle, it seems there are clearer signs now between hype and reality.