Featured News Headlines
Bitcoin Faces Quantum Threat: Encryption at Risk Within Five Years
Bitcoin Encryption Countdown – According to the Quantum Doomsday Clock, Bitcoin’s (BTC) encryption could be compromised as soon as March 8, 2028, signaling a potential crisis for blockchain security and digital asset privacy.
Countdown to Quantum Threat
The Quantum Doomsday Clock project has outlined a detailed timeline estimating when quantum computers might possess enough power to break modern encryption systems. Researchers predict it will take just two years, four months, and two days for quantum machines to reach the necessary logical qubit count to compromise Bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies.
Breaking current encryption methods would require 2,314 logical qubits for RSA-2048, 3,971 for RSA-4096, and 1,673 for ECC-256—the cryptographic system used in Bitcoin. These estimates rely on surface code error correction with error rates ranging from 10⁻³ to 10⁻⁵.
The study warns that improvements in quantum error correction could accelerate this timeline even further. “If focus shifts to qubit growth, then quantum supremacy could come sooner than anticipated,” the researchers note.
Experts Sound the Alarm
Industry experts have been increasingly vocal about the rising quantum threat. IBM CTO Michael Osborne recently said the risk to Bitcoin’s cryptography is “growing faster than expected,” while Naoris Protocol CEO David Carvalho warned that Bitcoin’s encryption could be broken within two to three years.
Solana co-founder Anatoly Yakovenko also urged the blockchain industry to transition to quantum-resistant cryptography within five years to prevent major security breaches.
Building a Quantum-Safe Future
In response, companies like BTQ Technologies are already developing quantum-safe Bitcoin implementations. Their project, Bitcoin Quantum Core 0.2, replaces Bitcoin’s vulnerable ECDSA signatures with ML-DSA, a NIST-approved post-quantum algorithm, aiming to safeguard the $2 trillion Bitcoin market.
