Overview
- Scott Aaronson wrote that a fault‑tolerant machine running Shor’s algorithm is a live possibility before the next U.S. presidential election, sharpening urgency around cryptographic risks.
- Fortune quoted Alice & Bob CEO Théau Peronnin, a partner of Nvidia, saying Bitcoin could face a credible quantum threat shortly after 2030 and arguing the network should fork by 2030.
- Blockstream’s Adam Back countered that Bitcoin likely has a 20–40 year runway, framing quantum risk as an engineering problem solvable with planned upgrades rather than an imminent break.
- NIST has standardized post‑quantum algorithms (ML‑KEM, ML‑DSA, SLH‑DSA), and Bitcoin developers have drafted migration paths such as BIP‑360 for hybrid or soft‑fork transitions.
- Operational exposure exists today through “harvest now, decrypt later” tactics and because roughly a quarter of BTC sits in outputs with public keys already revealed on‑chain.