“We are far from a quantum computer capable of breaking Bitcoin” for this security expert

Home » Crypto news » Bitcoin (BTC) news » “We are far from a quantum computer capable of breaking Bitcoin” for this security expert

https://cryptoast.fr/bitcoin-quantique-jameson-lopp-menace-lointaine/

Cryptocurrency users and investors regularly worry about the threat that quantum computing poses to the encryptions that protect this new form of digital currency. But according to Jameson Lopp, chief security officer at Casa, Bitcoin would face no immediate threat from quantum computers. The expert, a recognized figure in BTC network security issues, spoke during an interview with Bitcoin Magazine on October 26, 2026.

We are still far from a real, usable quantum computer capable of breaking the algorithm that secures your bitcoins.

According to Jameson Lopp, current quantum machines do not come close to having the power necessary to break the encryptions that protect the famous cryptocurrency. To prove that a user actually owns the funds of an address, Bitcoin relies on elliptic curve signatures: ECDSA and, since the Taproot update, Schnorr. Each address is based on a pair of keys: a private key, which allows funds to be spent, and a public key, which can appear on the blockchain. In theory, a sufficiently powerful quantum computer could find the private key from the public key.

JUST IN: Casa's Chief Security Officer Jameson Lopp says Bitcoin faces no immediate threat from quantum computing. 👀

“We are orders of magnitudes away from a real usable quantum computer that can crack the algorithm that is used to secure your Bitcoin.” 👏 pic.twitter.com/dr2A9o6qL4

If the threat is not immediate, Jameson Lopp estimating that we still have “a decade or more ahead of us”, it should not be neglected. And it is on a precise point that the experts focus their attention, namely the addresses whose public key has already been revealed at least once on the blockchain.

The problem is significant, because according to an analysis published on October 8, 2026 by Rafael Schultze-Kraft, co-founder of Glassnode, approximately 6.26 million BTC (or 31.2% of the circulating supply) rest in addresses whose public key is already visible on-chain. This exposure is broken down into two large blocks: 4.33 million BTC linked to address reuse, and 1.94 million BTC held via transaction formats (P2PK, Taproot) which directly reveal the public key.

Among these funds are in particular the approximately 1.71 million BTC dormant in old P2PK addresses, a good part of which (around 1.1 million BTC) is attributed to Satoshi Nakamoto, the creator of Bitcoin. If their owners have lost access to them, these bitcoins will never be able to migrate to addresses that can resist quantum attacks. On October 7, 2026, Europol also called on the ecosystem to immediately initiate a gradual migration towards post-quantum cryptography, the only solution for exposed funds being, according to the agency, a “preventive migration”.

Machine-translated from French