Quantum Hacking May Target Exchanges Before Satoshi Wallets, Report Says

If the so-called Q-Day arrives and quantum computers break current cryptography, wallets controlled by exchanges or stablecoin issuers could be targeted before the Bitcoin linked to Satoshi Nakamoto, Cointelegraph reported on August 10.

Christopher Smith, co-founder and chief executive officer of Quantus Network, said a sufficiently powerful quantum computer could derive a private key from a public key alone and steal assets. Unlike conventional hacks, such breaches may leave little to no forensic evidence.

“If someone cracks your private key, that doesn’t mean they leave behind a message explaining how the attack happened,” Smith said. At a heavily secured institution, the absence of any clear sign of compromise could itself be the only clue.

Markets have long worried that Satoshi Nakamoto’s Bitcoin, estimated at about 1.1 million BTC, would be the first major asset threatened by quantum computing. Smith argued that a real attacker would more likely pursue targets with greater economic value, such as exchange hot wallets or administrator wallets with authority to issue Tether’s USDT.

“The most valuable key on a blockchain may not be Satoshi’s wallet but Tether’s issuance key,” he said. “If someone takes that, they could mint new tokens and sell them into the market.”

Shawn Chittum, a security researcher at Blockchain Capital, also said attackers would likely target exchange hot wallets rather than Satoshi-linked wallets that would immediately draw market attention. Smith added that an attacker could disguise such an incident as a routine private-key compromise and hide the use of a quantum computer.

Opinions differ on when Q-Day could arrive. Google in March moved up its target date for transitioning to quantum-resistant cryptography to 2029 after artificial intelligence helped improve the efficiency of quantum algorithms.

Smith said there is about a 50% chance that quantum computers could break existing public-key cryptography before 2028, given the pace of AI development. Chittum, by contrast, placed the more realistic timeline in the early 2030s.