A new report from digital asset manager CoinShares is pushing back against growing fears that bitcoin faces an imminent threat from quantum computing, arguing that only a limited portion of supply is realistically exposed in a way that could disrupt markets.
At the center of CoinShares’ argument is dispersion. Rather than being concentrated in a few large, vulnerable wallets, most potentially exposed bitcoin is spread across tens of thousands of small holdings, making large-scale theft far more complex and economically unattractive than headline estimates suggest.
CoinShares, the world’s fourth-largest issuer of crypto exchange-traded products behind BlackRock, Grayscale and Fidelity, reported more than $10 billion in assets under management as of September 2025 and holds an estimated 34% share of the EMEA market.
The report, published Saturday, challenges widely circulated claims that 20% to 50% of all bitcoin could one day be vulnerable to quantum-enabled key extraction. CoinShares said those figures conflate theoretical cryptographic exposure with coins that could realistically be compromised in a coordinated attack.
Instead, the firm focused on legacy Pay-to-Public-Key (P2PK) addresses, where public keys are permanently visible on-chain and therefore more susceptible if sufficiently powerful quantum computers were to emerge. About 1.6 million BTC — roughly 8% of total supply — remains in these older address types.
Even so, CoinShares estimates that only around 10,200 BTC sits in addresses large enough to cause “appreciable market disruption” if stolen. The remainder is fragmented across more than 32,000 unspent transaction outputs (UTXOs), each averaging about 50 BTC.
This fragmentation dramatically raises the bar for any attacker. Rather than compromising a single wallet and extracting a market-moving sum, a quantum adversary would need to break thousands of individual keys one at a time — a process that would be slower, more detectable and far less profitable, even assuming unusually advanced quantum hardware.
CoinShares also highlighted how far current technology remains from posing a real threat. The firm estimates that breaking bitcoin’s cryptography would require fault-tolerant quantum systems roughly 100,000 times more powerful than today’s largest machines, placing the risk at least a decade away. Ledger CTO Charles Guillemet, cited in the report, noted that Google’s Willow system currently operates at 105 qubits, while key extraction would require machines with millions of qubits.
Rather than framing quantum computing as an emergency, CoinShares described it as a manageable, long-term engineering challenge. The firm supports a gradual transition toward post-quantum signature schemes that bitcoin could adopt without disrupting the network.
Concerns about quantum risk have resurfaced amid recent market volatility, as investors search for structural explanations for price weakness. In December, CoinDesk reported that most bitcoin developers view quantum computing as a distant issue, with machines capable of breaking bitcoin’s cryptography unlikely to arrive for decades.
Critics counter that the real concern is not the timeline, but the pace of preparation, particularly as governments and major technology firms begin rolling out quantum-resistant systems. Proposals such as BIP-360, which would introduce new wallet formats allowing users to migrate gradually, reflect that debate and underscore a growing divide between developer caution and institutional investors seeking clearer long-term assurances.
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