Quantum Clock Ticks for One-Third of Bitcoin Supply

Fundstrat cofounder Tom Lee has warned that quantum computers could crack Bitcoin as early as 2028-2029, citing Google research. He believes that modern computing technologies could render its existing protection obsolete, but notes that Ethereum and Solana are better protected against this risk.

However, the crypto community still lacks a unified rescue plan to address this threat. Lee's statement has been met with some skepticism, as Hashcash creator Adam Back pointed out that Bitcoin does not use encryption to process transactions in the first place. Instead, it uses digital signatures, specifically ECDSA, and users' seed phrases are secured by an enormous level of entropy that a quantum computer cannot brute-force.

The real vulnerability to Shor's algorithm lies with 30-35% of the total Bitcoin supply - roughly 7 million BTC sitting dormant on old legacy addresses or wallets whose addresses have been reused. These public keys have already been exposed on the blockchain, making it theoretically possible for a sufficiently powerful quantum computer to calculate the corresponding private keys and steal the coins.