Quantum Computing May Be Impacting Bitcoin Valuation

Analyst Willy Woo says growing concern about quantum computing has broken Bitcoin’s 12-year outperformance trend versus gold, and markets may be pricing the risk that so-called “lost” BTC could be reactivated if quantum advances made private keys vulnerable. Charles Edwards has similarly linked quantum fears to recent Bitcoin price weakness.

Bitcoin’s security relies on elliptic curve cryptography (ECDSA over secp256k1). A sufficiently advanced, fault-tolerant quantum computer running Shor’s algorithm could theoretically derive private keys from exposed public keys and compromise funds, though such technology is not yet capable of breaking that encryption.

Woo highlighted the possibility that an estimated 4 million “lost” BTC could re-enter circulation if those breakthroughs occurred.

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