CoinShares: "Bitcoin quantum-computing risk exaggerated…not a near-term threat"

Digital asset manager CoinShares said market concerns over Bitcoin (BTC) being vulnerable to quantum computing have been overly inflated.

According to The Block on the 8th (local time), Christopher Bendiksen, head of Bitcoin research at CoinShares, said in a recent report that "quantum risk is not an immediate crisis, but a technical challenge that can be addressed with sufficient time."

The report rebutted the claim that "20–50% of all Bitcoin is vulnerable," arguing that the figure was derived by lumping together address types with fundamentally different real-world risk profiles. CoinShares estimates that about 1.6 million BTC—roughly 8% of total supply—is held in legacy (P2PK) addresses where public keys are permanently exposed, and that only about 10,000 BTC of that amount could cause a meaningful market shock.

From a technical standpoint, the threat is still viewed as distant. The report said that decrypting a Bitcoin public key within a day would require performance more than about 100,000 times that of today’s quantum computers. CoinShares stressed that "a practical attack is not possible with current quantum-computing technology."

It also pushed back against calls in some quarters to "burn vulnerable coins," saying such proposals run counter to Bitcoin’s property-rights principles. CoinShares concluded that "rather than rushing to adopt unproven quantum-resistant technology, a gradual transition following thorough validation is preferable."