- Nearly 10% of Bitcoin‘s total supply, or roughly 1.92 million BTC, is “structurally unsafe” from quantum attacks.
- Holdings by Satoshi Nakamoto, early “Satoshi-era” coins, and modern Taproot addresses constitute the vulnerable supply.
- About 70% of Bitcoin’s supply is considered safe, while 20% is “operationally unsafe” due to key management issues.
- Ark Invest estimates breaking Bitcoin’s cryptography would require about 2,330 logical qubits.
According to Glassnode, nearly 10% of Bitcoin’s supply is now considered “structurally unsafe” due to a quantum computing breakthrough, revealing public keys by design regardless of address management. This totals about 1.92 million BTC, valued at over $120 billion, from early Pay-to-Public-Key outputs and modern Taproot addresses.
Bitcoin creator Satoshi Nakamoto‘s coins represent about 1.1 million of this vulnerable supply. Meanwhile, another 620,000 Satoshi-era coins and roughly 200,000 coins in Taproot addresses contribute to the risk.
The findings underscore the need for a quantum-proof path for Bitcoin. Consequently, proposals like BIP-360’s Pay-to-Merkle-Root output type aim to remove Taproot’s vulnerable key path, though it does not itself add post-quantum signatures.
While 9.6% of the supply remains structurally exposed, a significant part could be reduced if infrastructure and behavior evolve. However, this supply would only be vulnerable if quantum computers can break Bitcoin’s elliptic curve cryptography.
Ark Invest published a white paper in March estimating the attack would require about 2,330 logical qubits and tens of millions to billions of quantum gates.
Glassnode estimates about 13.99 million Bitcoin, representing 69.8% of the total supply, remain unexposed. This figure is largely in line with Ark Invest‘s analysis showing 65% of the supply was safe.
Still, about 4.12 million BTC are “operationally unsafe,” exposed due to key management issues. Entity-level data shows the holdings of large corporate entities like Franklin Templeton, WisdomTree, and Robinhood are 100% exposed.
Only about 5% of BTC held on Coinbase is exposed, compared to 85% of Binance‘s BTC and about 100% of the holdings on Bitfinex. To reduce exposure, exchanges and custodians are advised to reduce key reuse and improve address hygiene.
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