Only 10,200 BTC is at quantum risk big enough to move markets, CoinShares says

CoinShares pushed back on growing warnings that quantum computers pose an imminent crisis for bitcoin, arguing that the portion of supply realistically at risk is much smaller than some estimates suggest. The firm disputed figures that put 20%–50% of bitcoin in theoretical danger and instead focused on legacy Pay-to-Public-Key (P2PK) addresses, which permanently expose public keys on-chain.

It estimated about 1.6 million BTC, roughly 8% of total supply, sits in these older address types. Even so, CoinShares said only about 10,200 BTC are concentrated enough to cause appreciable market disruption if stolen. Most potentially exposed coins are scattered across more than 32,000 UTXOs averaging about 50 BTC each, so an attacker would have to crack targets one by one — a slower, noisier and less profitable approach.

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