The threat of quantum computers to Bitcoin doesn't seem to be as urgent as many think. A recent report from CoinShares suggests some quite interesting insights.

It's often said that 20% to 50% of Bitcoin's supply could become vulnerable through quantum key extraction, but CoinShares disputes this. They point out that this confuses theoretical risk with the actual coins that could be stolen.

In reality, about 1.6 million BTC are stored in legacy P2PK addresses, which is roughly 8% of the total. Of these, only around 10,200 BTC could potentially be stolen in a way that moves the market. The rest are spread across over 32,000 UTXOs, averaging about 50 BTC per chunk. Attackers would need to decrypt these one by one, which slows down the process and reduces potential profits.

To break Bitcoin's cryptography today, you'd need a fault-tolerant quantum system with roughly 100k times the performance of the largest current machines. Ledger's chief technology officer also points out that Google's Willow has 105 qubits, but cracking keys would require several million qubits. So, this threat is at least ten years away.

Currently, Bitcoin's price hovers around $73.99K, but the market's instability due to quantum risk is more about a lack of visible preparation rather than a timeline issue. The fact that a major centralized exchange's funding rate has remained negative for 46 days also indicates continued bearish positioning.

CoinShares positions quantum risk not as an emergency but as a long-term engineering challenge that Bitcoin can gradually absorb. Introducing new wallet formats through proposals like BIP-360 would allow users to transition step-by-step. There is plenty of time before fault-tolerant quantum systems become a reality.

According to K33 Research, such long-term risk-off phases have historically been precursors to sharp price surges and good entry points. In other words, the current bearish mood might also present an opportunity.