A new report from CoinShares is pushing back against rising concerns that bitcoin faces an imminent threat from quantum computing, arguing that only a small portion of supply is exposed in a way that could realistically move markets.
The digital asset manager says the risk is often overstated because potentially vulnerable bitcoin is not concentrated in a handful of large wallets. Instead, it is spread across tens of thousands of smaller holdings, significantly reducing both the practicality and economic incentive for a large-scale quantum attack.
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.
In a report published Saturday, the firm challenged estimates suggesting that 20% to 50% of bitcoin supply could eventually be vulnerable to quantum-enabled key extraction. CoinShares said those figures conflate theoretical cryptographic exposure with coins that could plausibly be compromised at scale.
The analysis focused on legacy Pay-to-Public-Key (P2PK) addresses, where public keys are permanently visible on-chain and therefore more susceptible if sufficiently advanced quantum computers were to emerge. CoinShares estimates that roughly 1.6 million BTC — about 8% of total supply — remains in these older address types.
Even within that group, the amount of bitcoin capable of causing meaningful market disruption if stolen is far smaller. CoinShares estimates that only about 10,200 BTC sits in addresses large enough to matter at a systemic level. The rest is fragmented across more than 32,000 unspent transaction outputs (UTXOs), each averaging around 50 BTC.
This fragmentation sharply raises the difficulty for any attacker. Rather than breaching a single wallet and extracting a market-moving sum, a quantum adversary would need to compromise thousands of individual keys one by one, making the process slower, more detectable and far less profitable, even under optimistic assumptions.
CoinShares also emphasized the technological gap between today’s quantum hardware and what would be required to threaten bitcoin’s cryptography. The firm estimates that fault-tolerant quantum systems roughly 100,000 times more powerful than current machines would be needed, placing the risk at least a decade away. Ledger CTO Charles Guillemet, quoted in the report, noted that Google’s Willow system 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 long-term engineering challenge that bitcoin can address gradually. The firm supports a phased transition toward post-quantum signature schemes that could be implemented without disrupting the network.
Concerns about quantum risk have resurfaced amid recent market volatility, as investors look for deeper structural explanations for price weakness. In December, CoinDesk reported that most bitcoin developers view quantum computing as a distant issue, arguing that machines capable of breaking bitcoin’s cryptography are unlikely to exist for decades.
Skeptics counter that the greater risk lies not in the timeline, but in the lack of visible preparation, particularly as governments and major technology firms begin deploying quantum-resistant systems. Proposals such as BIP-360, which would introduce new wallet formats enabling gradual migration, highlight the growing tension between developer caution and institutional investors seeking clearer long-term assurances.
