Overview
- Project Eleven, which published its report Wednesday, says a cryptographically relevant quantum computer is more likely than not by 2033 and could appear as early as 2030.
- The firm estimates about 6.9 million BTC and more than 65% of ETH sit in addresses with public keys already exposed on‑chain, which lets a future quantum attacker derive private keys using Shor’s algorithm.
- A March paper from Google researchers lowered the bar to roughly 1,200 logical qubits and under 90 minutes to break Bitcoin’s elliptic‑curve scheme, which compresses earlier hardware assumptions.
- Migrating Bitcoin to quantum‑safe addresses would be slow even in a best case, with Project Eleven modeling roughly 76 days if every block carried only migration transactions, and far longer in normal use.
- CEO Alex Pruden urged moving from research to deployment now, pointing to hash‑based signature tests like BIP‑360 and Blockstream’s Liquid trial, while noting the wider internet has begun PQ rollouts through Cloudflare, OpenSSH, Apple, and U.S. government targets.