Coinbase executive outlines two quantum-era risks to Bitcoin

Beincrypto reports Coinbase’s Head of Investment Research, David Duong, said advances in quantum computing pose long-term risks that extend beyond Bitcoin’s private key security and could challenge the network’s economic and security models. Duong stressed current quantum technology is far from capable of compromising Bitcoin today, making the concern a long-term one, but he described two distinct threats tied to the network’s cryptography: ECDSA, which secures transaction signatures and ownership, and SHA-256, which underpins proof-of-work mining and blockchain integrity.

"That means quantum computers actually pose two separate threats," he wrote, and warned signature-related risks include "long-range attacks against outputs whose public keys are already exposed onchain, and short-range attacks that could front-run spends as public keys appear in the mempool." According to his analysis, about 6.51 million BTC, roughly 32.7% of the supply as of block 900,000, could be exposed to long-range quantum attacks due to address reuse and script types such as P2PK, P2MS and P2TR.

Key Topics

Crypto, Bitcoin, Coinbase, David Duong, Ecdsa, Post-quantum Cryptography