Quantum Threat Looms: ~6.9 Million Bitcoins "Hanging by a Thread"

Although Bitcoin prices have recently shown signs of recovery, rebounding above $76,000, a report from Google's quantum AI team has sounded an alarm for the crypto market.

The report indicates that a computer with 500,000 physical qubits could break Bitcoin's elliptic curve cryptography (ECC) — the algorithm Bitcoin relies on for security — in just nine minutes, with an estimated 41% chance of success. Even more concerning, approximately 6.9 million Bitcoins exposed on the public blockchain (roughly one-third of the total supply) are facing a direct quantum threat, a scale that could pose systemic risk to the crypto market.

Although Google states that a quantum computer of this caliber is at least five to ten years away, this timeline has already put pressure on the crypto community. On the bright side, Ethereum co-founder Vitalik Buterin has proposed a concept called "stealth addresses" combined with quantum-resistant signature schemes, which could potentially protect user assets in the long term. However, the industry has yet to find a perfect solution for securing Bitcoin addresses that have remained untouched for years.

Market concerns have already translated into price pressure. Bitcoin is currently trading at $74,649.4. Over the past 24 hours, 110,000 traders have been liquidated, with total liquidations reaching $219 million. Facing this "quantum Damoclean sword" hanging overhead, the crypto world stands at a crossroads of technological change.

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