Only 10K Bitcoin Is Quantum-Vulnerable and Worth Attacking

CoinShares Bitcoin research lead Christopher Bendiksen said just 10,230 Bitcoin of 1.63 million sit in wallet addresses with publicly visible cryptographic keys that are vulnerable to a quantum computing attack. A little over 7,000 Bitcoin are in wallets holding between 100 and 1,000 BTC, while roughly 3,230 are in wallets with 1,000 to 10,000 BTC — together equating to $719.1 million at current market prices.

The remaining 1.62 million Bitcoin are in wallets holding under 100 BTC, which Bendiksen said would each take a millennium to unlock even in the "most outlandishly optimistic scenario of technological progression in quantum computing." These vulnerable coins are unspent transaction output (UTXO) wallets, many dating to the Satoshi era.

Bendiksen framed the risk as theoretical, driven by quantum algorithms such as Shor’s, which could break Bitcoin’s elliptic-curve signatures, and Grover’s, which could weaken SHA-256.

bitcoin, quantum computing, utxo, satoshi, shor, grover, elliptic curve, sha-256, coinshares, christopher bendiksen