Regarding the threat of quantum computers to Bitcoin, I think recent market discussions are falling into optimistic nihilism. Looking at the report released by CoinShares last month, it becomes clear how exaggerated these concerns are.

Generally, estimates are cited that suggest up to 20-50% of Bitcoin could become vulnerable due to quantum-resistant key extraction. But in reality, the amount of supply exposed to risks on a scale that could shake the market is far more limited than imagined.

According to CoinShares' analysis, about 1.6 million BTC, roughly 8% of the total supply, are stored in old Pay-to-Public-Key (P2PK) addresses. These addresses, with public keys permanently visible on-chain, are certainly prime targets for quantum computers. However, the number of coins that could actually cause "significant market disruption" through theft is only about 10,200 BTC.

This is the crucial point. The remaining majority are dispersed across over 32,000 UTXOs, with an average of about 50 BTC per chunk. For a quantum attacker to execute a large-scale theft capable of moving the market, they would need to decrypt each of these one by one. This would slow down the attack, make it more noticeable, and reduce profitability. In other words, there is a significant gap between the theoretical risk and the practically feasible threat.

Furthermore, breaking Bitcoin's cryptography would require a fault-tolerant quantum system with roughly 100k times the performance of the current largest quantum machines. As Ledger's Chief Technology Officer points out, while Google's Willow has 105 qubits, cracking keys would require several million qubits. This means the threat is likely at least ten years away.

While the market tends to treat quantum risk as an emergency, CoinShares positions it as a foreseeable technical challenge. Through a phased transition to post-quantum signatures, Bitcoin can adequately address the issue with an optimistic nihilistic approach. Certainly, there is a gap in long-term planning between developers and institutional investors. But realistically, the data suggests there is no immediate reason to panic.