Bitcoin Policy Institute Warns Quantum Advances Compress Network Development Timeline
A new brief from the Bitcoin Policy Institute says that recent breakthroughs in quantum computing are speeding up the timeline by which Bitcoin’s cryptography may face credible threats, while stressing that developers are already preparing solutions.
In its report, The State of Play: Quantum Computing and Bitcoin’s Path ForwardThe Bitcoin Policy Institute points to two research papers released on March 31 by Google and the California Institute of Technology that reshape long-held assumptions about the computing power required to break Bitcoin’s encryption.
For years, estimates suggest that an attacker would need approximately 10 million qubits to exploit Shor’s algorithm and compromise Bitcoin’s security model. According to the Bitcoin Policy Institute’s analysis of Google’s findings, that limit could be reduced to less than 500,000 qubits. A separate paper involving Caltech and the University of California, Berkeley shows that specialized quantum systems can lower that requirement further, in the range between 10,000 and 26,000 qubits.
The Bitcoin Policy Institute notes that the two papers take different approaches—one emphasizing software efficiency and the other hardware design—but reach the same conclusion: the resource requirements of quantum attacks are decreasing.
Despite that change, the organization insists that Bitcoin is not under immediate threat. Current quantum machines remain far below the standards stated in the research. Google’s most advanced processor, Willow, operates with just over 100 qubits, leaving a wide gap between theory and performance.
Still, the Bitcoin Policy Institute cites the findings as a sign that the correction should continue apace. The report highlights ongoing efforts within the Bitcoin engineering community to address long-term risks tied to quantum computing.
Central to that work is BIP-360, a proposal that the Bitcoin Policy Institute describes as one of the most active areas of development in the history of the protocol. The proposal introduces a new address format that prevents public keys from being revealed during transactions, removing a key vulnerability that could be exploited by quantum attackers.
The Bitcoin Policy Institute points to a testnet launched in March that has already attracted more than 50 miners and more than 100 cryptographers. The level of participation, the group argues, reflects a strong understanding of all technical stakeholders.
The report reiterates that Bitcoin’s existing structures offer flexibility. The development of Taproot, implemented in 2021, includes features that can support methods to ensure quantum resistance in other spending situations.
Beyond the Bitcoin ecosystem, the Bitcoin Policy Institute frames the issue within broader policy. The National Institute of Standards and Technology finalized post-quantum cryptographic standards by 2024, providing tools that can be converted to Bitcoin. Government agencies have been given a 2035 deadline to move to value-resistant systems, while Google has set an internal target of 2029.
Bitcoin’s decentralized structure is a challenge
The Bitcoin Policy Institute emphasizes that Bitcoin’s decentralized structure presents a unique challenge. Unlike governments or companies, the network cannot authorize development. Any change must come from consensus among the participants.
However, the report points to past developments as evidence that communication is possible. With quantum security, the Bitcoin Policy Institute says, the incentives are aligned across the network, as all participants depend on maintaining the integrity of the system.
The report concludes that the quantum threat is not imminent, but the timeline is tight. In the opinion of the Bitcoin Policy Institute, technical solutions are already stalling, and the focus is now shifting to how the network reaches a consensus on transmission.
Yesterday, a new research proposal from StarkWare’s Avihu Levy presented “Quantum Safe Bitcoin” (QSB), a system designed to protect Bitcoin transactions from future quantum attacks without requiring changes to the network’s core protocol.
This approach moves security from vulnerable ECDSA signatures to hash-based reasoning, which aims to guard against threats such as Shor’s algorithm while remaining compatible with the existing Bitcoin system.
