Tezos’s co-founder Arthur Breitman has been blunt about the stakes. Previously, he has called Bitcoiners’ quantum theories “half-baked crank theories about quantum mechanics.” However, in a recent conversation with AMBCrypto, he clarified,
The crank theories represent a small group of people, though there’s a broader group that sees no urgency, or believes Bitcoin can handle post quantum without any soft or hard fork.
Urgency comes from Google’s “9-minute problem”
What exacerbated the debate on crypto and quantum computers? Well, in March 2026, Google published a research paper that compressed the timeline of the quantum threat from a “2040s problem” to a preparation window for “2030–2035.”
The paper cut the estimated physical qubits needed to break Bitcoin’s elliptic curve cryptography by roughly 20x — From millions to fewer than 500,000.
That paper triggered a scramble in the industry. What was even more notable was the “9-minute problem.” For the uninitiated, public keys are exposed in Bitcoin’s mempool while the network confirms it.
Google’s paper also claimed a powerful enough quantum computer could potentially extract a key within approximately 9 minutes under specific assumptions. And Bitcoin’s average block time is 10 minutes.
Google puts the odds of a successful hijack at 41% — not a guarantee, but much too close for comfort.
However, Maksym Sakharov, CEO & Co-Founder of WeFi, told AMBCrypto,
I would be careful about treating the 41% figure as a prediction of what will happen in practice.
He explained,
Google’s paper models a specific attack scenario under a defined set of assumptions, including a sufficiently capable fault-tolerant quantum computer, a public key becoming available almost immediately, and conditions that can favor either the attacker or the legitimate user depending on network behavior.
According to Google’s paper, the attack doesn’t need to crack your cold wallet or steal your seed phrase. It just needs to catch your transaction in that brief window when your key is visible.
Sakharov, talking about the long-term, hypothesized,
Preparation matters more than prediction. The objective should be to ensure that migration paths, governance, and upgrade mechanisms are in place well before advances in quantum computing become an operational concern.
It’s not so easy for Bitcoin
For Bitcoin, however, the problem can get even more complicated. Glassnode’s May 2026 research found that over 6 million Bitcoin, or roughly 30% of $BTC’s current supply, sits in addresses where the public key is already visible on-chain. That’s roughly $500–600 billion ripe for the taking.
And yet, the contrast between the exchanges is striking. About 1.66 million $BTC held on exchanges falls into the exposed category — roughly 40% of all operationally exposed Bitcoin. Coinbase has 5% exposure; Fidelity at 2%.
Binance sits at 85%. Bitfinex, Robinhood, and several others are at or near 100%.
Christopher Smith, co-founder and CEO of Quantus, elaborated on Bitcoin’s exposure problem in conversation with AMBCrypto.
It’s a solvable technical problem, but the social coordination is the difficult part. For various reasons, Bitcoin has cultivated a culture of not changing, but it really is a cultural issue more than a technical issue. If we had a post-quantum address type, then most big addresses could migrate within a few months.
He continued,
The bigger issues are that post-quantum addresses could take years to ship, and nobody has a politically viable solution for Satoshi’s coins, which are currently an $80B quantum canary.
Smith’s argument highlights one of Bitcoin’s unresolved questions. The harder decisions will involve coins that will never migrate, including Bitcoin founder Satoshi’s 1.1 million stash.
Coinbase’s Quantum Advisory Council understands these concerns as well and has thus outlined three options: freeze, burn, or do nothing and take the loss. However, each option here clashes with Bitcoin’s core principles in some way.
So, what’s the solution?
For Bitcoin’s network to become quantum-proof, starting today means completion on around 2033. This would uncomfortably overlap with Google’s 2030–2035 preparation window.
One must also remember that Bitcoin’s governance is notoriously slow. It’s an open secret. SegWit took over eight years from conception to adoption, and Taproot underwent the same journey in nearly seven years.
For casual observers on the scene, Bitcoin’s BIP-360 may seem like the solution. It is the network’s quantum-resistance proposal that introduces a new address type called P2MR (Pay-to-Merkle-Root), removes Taproot’s key-path spending, and uses hash-based commitments.
However, be warned, BIP-360 is not quantum-proof. In fact, it does not answer the Bitcoin network’s concerns. As Christopher Smith told AMBCrypto,
The quantum safety of a BIP360 address is the same as a P2PKH address. To make a fully post-quantum address type, we need post-quantum op codes, which requires a decision on which post-quantum algorithm to support, and there is no official process for this.
In a nutshell, BIP-360 has critical limits that cannot be ignored.
First of all, it doesn’t replace Bitcoin’s cryptography as ECDSA and Schnorr signatures remain in use. P2MR reduces exposure by forcing spending through script paths, but it’s merely a risk-reduction measure.
Also, BIP-360 will not migrate existing coins automatically. There is a 2-step process here. To begin with, every wallet, exchange, and custodian needs to support the new quantum-proof addresses. Next, users will have to voluntarily move funds. That coordination hasn’t started yet, and there’s no timeline as to when it will.
Breitman has a word of advice though,
Offer hash-based signatures now. The chain can soft-fork very quickly in an emergency, I believe it will, and that’s a good thing. But users can be very slow moving, and they need to be given ample time, several years, to migrate.
What are the market’s altcoins doing?
Altcoin networks have already started their push towards making crypto future-ready, in a sense. The most notable example is the Tezos network, whose post-quantum previewnet went live on 2nd September 2026, with tz5 accounts using ML-DSA-44 signatures.
The network also supports STARK-based consensus aggregation, a ZODA data availability layer, and TzEL private payments on testnet, making it the most comprehensive quantum-resistant network out of any major chain.
According to Breitman,
Starks have come a long way in terms of proving speed and ease of deployment, and they pair very nicely with hash-based signatures.
As far as the rest of the market is concerned, Native Falcon-1024 accounts have been live on Algorand’s mainnet since v5.0.0 in August 2026. Since then, the network has processed over 500,000+ post-quantum-signed transactions. Right now, Falcon-1024 is a NIST Level 5 standard — the highest security category.
The Quantum Resistant Ledger, also dubbed to be the “original post-quantum blockchain,” has been running XMSS since June 2018. That’s eight years of quantum-resistant operations!
The list will be incomplete without mentioning Ethereum since it has released a roadmap targeting full quantum protection by 2029. Account abstraction, also dubbed EIP-8141, will let users switch to quantum-resistant signatures before the protocol-wide migration begins.
‘Quantum-ready’ is already becoming a narrative
Today, a network being ‘quantum-ready’ is more than just a talking point. For traders, the differentiator is quite simple — which chains look ready, and which are still dragging their feet?
Currently, only Tezos, Algorand, and QRL have real implementations. Though it is a start, it is concerning, as none of the major altcoin networks, with the exception of Ethereum, even have a concrete roadmap.
Bitcoin does not even have its head in the game.
The window between “we have time” and “we’re out of time” is narrowing. If the transition to post-quantum cryptography arrives sooner, the networks that began preparing early will be the victors.
Maksym Sakharov mulled,
The strongest ecosystems are already thinking about cryptographic migration as part of their long-term roadmap rather than as a future emergency. Good financial infrastructure is designed around the assumption that today’s strongest cryptography will eventually be replaced by
something stronger.
For now, the market is watching, and the chains already in the game have a head start.
For individual users, though, the takeaway is simpler: DYOR. As Sakharov put it,
Individual users cannot realistically prepare for advances in cryptography on their own. Their long-term protection will depend far more on whether the infrastructure they rely on is designed to adapt as security standards evolve.
Final Summary
- Quantum computers can theoretically steal exposed Bitcoin keys in nine minutes — under the 10-minute window needed for Bitcoin’s mempool.
- Tezos, Algorand, and QRL are already quantum-ready, while Bitcoin’s BIP-360 is just a risk-reduction measure, not a solution.
