Imagine waking up one day to find:

Bitcoin hasn't been banned by any country.

No exchange has collapsed.

The Bitcoin network is still producing blocks normally.

But one machine has suddenly gained a capability:

Given your public key, it can reverse-engineer your private key.

On that day, Bitcoin wouldn't just face another bear market.

It would face the closest thing to a“change in the laws of physics” since its birth.

What's more, this is no longer a distant sci-fi scenario.

I. Google's CEO Says Practical Quantum Computing May Be Only 5–10 Years Away

In February 2025, Google CEO Sundar Pichai said at the World Governments Summit in Dubai that he believes quantum computers with“practical uses”are about5–10 years away.

He even used a telling analogy:

Today's quantum computing reminds him ofAI in the mid-2010s.

In other words, looking at quantum computing today might be like looking atGoogle Brain ten years ago—you can see the direction, but you don't yet realize that a few years later,ChatGPT would suddenly appear in everyone's pocket.

But here's the crucial caveat:

Pichai did not say“Bitcoin will be cracked in 5–10 years.”

Between a“practical quantum computer” and a“fault-tolerant quantum computer capable of breaking 256-bit elliptic curve cryptography,” there remains a massive technical gap.

Yet another fact can't be ignored:

That gap is narrowing.

II. What Exactly Is“5 Minutes to Complete What a Supercomputer Would Take 10^25 Years to Do”?

In December 2024, Google released the Willow chip with 105 physical qubits.

The headline-grabbing number was:

Willow completed a computation in under 5 minutes that Google estimates would take today's fastest classical supercomputer approximately:

10^25 years.

That's a 1 followed by 25 zeros.

It's many orders of magnitude longer than the age of the universe.

But here, too, we need to cool things down.

The task is calledRandom Circuit Sampling (RCS).

It's a benchmark specifically designed to test whether a quantum processor can outperform classical computers on a certain class of problems.

So this does not mean:

Willow can crack Bitcoin in five minutes.

Not at all.

What really matters is something else Willow accomplished.

III. More Important Than“10^25 Years”: Quantum Error Correction Finally Crossed a Threshold

The biggest enemy of quantum computing has never been“not enough qubits.”

It's this:

Too prone to errors.

A classical bit is either 0 or 1.

But qubits are extremely fragile—temperature, vibration, and electromagnetic interference can all cause errors.

So scientists must use many physical qubits to collectively protect a reliable“logical qubit.”

The past problem was:

The more qubits you add, the more errors you get.

It's like hiring more people to boost a team's efficiency, only to find communication overhead grows faster than productivity.

Willow's real breakthrough is that Google's experiment, published in Nature, showed:

As the error-correcting code scale increases, the logical error rate can actually keep decreasing.

This is the“below threshold” milestone that quantum computing research has pursued for nearly 30 years.

In plain terms:

Previously, no one knew if quantum computers could be scaled up.

Now, at least one thing is proven:

In theory, they can.

That's where cryptography should start getting nervous.

IV. A 2026 Paper Suddenly Brought This Problem Closer to Bitcoin

In March of this year, a highly notable study appeared.

Researchers from Google Quantum AI, along with Stanford cryptographer Dan Boneh and others, published a resource estimation for quantum attacks on elliptic curve cryptography.

Their question was very direct:

How large a quantum computer would be needed to break 256-bit elliptic curve cryptography?

The answer:

Under the algorithm and hardware assumptions in the paper, Shor's algorithm might require onlyfewer than 1,200 logical qubits; if future superconducting quantum systems can achieve the assumed physical error rates and connectivity, the number of physical qubits needed for an attack could drop tounder 500,000, with runtime potentially as short as minutes.

This is a resource estimate, not a real-world attack demonstration.

Today, Google's Willow has only 105 physical qubits.

Going from 105 to hundreds of thousands—while also requiring large-scale error correction, extremely low logical error rates, and stable execution of tens of millions of quantum gate operations—still involves a massive engineering gap.

So saying:

“Quantum computing is about to steal Bitcoin.”

is wrong.

But the flip side:

“Quantum computing is decades away from breaking cryptography, so we don't need to worry at all.”

is increasingly dangerous.

V. Many People Get This Wrong: Quantum Computing Won't Attack Bitcoin Mining First

Bitcoin actually uses two important types of cryptographic tools.

One is the SHA-256 hash.

The other is digital signatures.

Traditional Bitcoin transactions use ECDSA, while Taproot uses Schnorr signatures based on the samesecp256k1 elliptic curve.

The real danger lies in the second type.

Once Shor's algorithm is implemented on a sufficiently large fault-tolerant quantum computer, it can efficiently solve the elliptic curve discrete logarithm problem.

In plain English:

Deriving a private key from a public key was previously nearly impossible; a quantum computer could turn“impossible” into“computable.”

And what is a private key?

It's the ultimate proof of your control over Bitcoin.

Whoever holds the private key can sign and transfer the coins.

So a future quantum attack wouldn't need to break the Bitcoin network.

An attacker would only need to accomplish:

Public key → Private key

That's it.

VI. Not All Bitcoins Will Suddenly Be Exposed at the Same Moment

Here's another crucial detail.

Different Bitcoin addresses expose public keys in different ways.

Early P2PK addresses put the public key directly on-chain, so they've been exposed for years; Taproot's P2TR outputs also reveal the elliptic curve public key.

This means that once a quantum computer with real cracking capability emerges, UTXOs with long-exposed public keys will be the most obvious targets.

Meanwhile, P2PKH and P2WPKH addresses mainly expose a public key hash on-chain before they're spent, rather than the full public key.

But once you spend, the public key is revealed.

So the attack pattern could become:

You broadcast a transaction.

A quantum attacker sees your public key.

Before the block is confirmed, they compute the private key.

Then they submit another transaction, moving the funds to their own account.

Bitcoin's proposed BIP-360 even gives these scenarios specific names:

long exposure attack

and

short exposure attack.

So the future question isn't simply:

“Can quantum computing crack Bitcoin?”

It's:

How long does it take to crack one public key?

A day?

A minute?

10 seconds?

That speed will determine the level of danger.

VII. The Most Provocative Question: What Happens to Satoshi's Coins?

In Bitcoin's earliest days, a large portion of mining used the P2PK format.

That means many early coins' public keys have been exposed on-chain for over a decade.

BIP-360 even explicitly lists:

“Satoshi's coins, CPU miners”

as potential targets of long-term quantum attacks.

This raises an extremely thorny issue.

Suppose one day a quantum computer can crack these private keys.

Those Bitcoins that haven't moved in twenty years suddenly start transferring.

How do you determine:

Is this Satoshi himself?

Or a quantum hacker?

A technical problem instantly becomes a governance problem.

Should the community freeze these coins?

If so, who has the authority to decide which coins belong to“rightful owners”?

If not, and the first person with a quantum computer takes them, does that still uphold Bitcoin's original property rights principles?

Quantum computing's real impact might not even be limited to Bitcoin's cryptography.

It could strike at Bitcoin's most sacred principle:

“Code is law”—its governance philosophy.

VIII. The Bitcoin Community Has Actually Started Preparing

This is also the most overlooked piece of information.

In February 2026, a draft proposal appeared in the Bitcoin BIP repository: BIP-361: Post Quantum Migration and Legacy Signature Sunset.

Its goals are quite ambitious:

If Bitcoin introduces quantum-resistant signature addresses in the future, it could phase out sending funds to traditional quantum-vulnerable addresses, and eventually restrict legacy ECDSA/Schnorr signature schemes.

Under the current draft, the migration from start to the further exit of legacy signature systems could itself take years.

Meanwhile, BIP-360 proposes P2MR, aiming to first address the long-term public key exposure problem and pave the way for true post-quantum signatures later.

These are all just drafts for now.

They're far from a Bitcoin network-wide upgrade.

But they prove one thing:

Bitcoin developers no longer treat quantum computing as a purely sci-fi problem.

IX. The Real Challenge Isn't“Whether Quantum-Resistant Algorithms Exist”

Some might ask:

If we know the danger, why not just switch to a different cipher?

In theory, of course we can.

In fact, the U.S. NIST officially released the first post-quantum cryptography standards back in 2024, includingML-DSA and SLH-DSA for digital signatures, and explicitly recommended that information systems begin migration now.

The real problem is:

Bitcoin isn't a Google server.

Google can upgrade its cryptography by requiring server and software updates.

Bitcoin has no CEO.

No headquarters.

No button to click that says:

“Update the entire network.”

Exchanges, miners, wallets, hardware wallets, custodians, nodes, and hundreds of millions of users worldwide would all need to migrate gradually.

Moreover, post-quantum signatures are typically larger than the signatures Bitcoin uses today, increasing transaction data size, block space usage, and verification costs.

The hardest part has never been:

Finding a new lock.

It's:

Getting billions of old keys worldwide replaced simultaneously before the attacker arrives.

X. So Is Bitcoin Really Down to 5–10 Years?

Now we can answer the title question.

We don't know.

Pichai's 5–10 years refers to“practical quantum computing.”

Not“a countdown to cracking Bitcoin.”

Today, there's no public evidence that any quantum computer is close to having the capability to attack Bitcoin.

But on the other hand:

The cryptographic migration itself could also take 5–10 years.

That's the most concerning timing mismatch.

If attack capability takes ten years to arrive, and a network-wide upgrade also takes ten years, you can't wait until year nine to start the discussion.

It's like building a dam.

The smart time to act is never after you see the floodwaters before looking for cement.

XI. AI Hasn't Even Finished Its Run—Why Is Quantum Computing Here Already?

Over the past three years, the world has been frantically adding classical computing power for AI.

GPUs, HBM, optical modules, data centers, electricity.

AI addresses the question:

How to make machines smarter within existing computational rules.

Quantum computing explores something else:

Can we directly change the rules of computation itself?

And the most interesting part is that the two are already helping each other.

Google has disclosed that its quantum error correction system itself uses machine learning algorithms to help identify and correct errors.

So a highly dramatic loop could emerge:

AI helps humans build better quantum computers;

quantum computers then redefine what AI, materials, medicine, and cryptography can compute.

Twenty years ago, the computing race was:

Which CPU is faster.

Ten years ago, it was:

Who has more GPUs.

In the future, it may become:

Who has truly fault-tolerant quantum computing capability.

And on that day, many rules of the digital world we now consider“unbreakable” will need to be re-examined.

XII. Bitcoin's Greatest Risk May Be Its Greatest Strength

One of the most captivating phrases about Bitcoin is:

21 million forever.

The money supply is written into the rules.

No central bank can change it.

No president can arbitrarily print more.

But many forget:

Bitcoin's ability to maintain all of this rests not just on the number 21 million.

It also rests on a set of mathematical assumptions:

Hash functions are secure enough.

Private keys cannot be derived from public keys.

Digital signatures cannot be forged.

Today, these assumptions feel as solid as the laws of physics.

Here's what's truly unsettling about quantum computing:

It doesn't try to violate Bitcoin's rules.

It could change the mathematical environment on which Bitcoin's rules depend.

So I don't believe:

“Quantum computing will kill Bitcoin.”

Bitcoin is, at its core, software.

As long as humanity completes the upgrade before cryptography truly fails, it can migrate to the post-quantum era.

The real question is:

Bitcoin's most trusted feature is that it's very hard to change.

And when facing quantum computing, the capability it needs most is precisely:

To make a sufficiently large change at the right time.

That may be Bitcoin's true test over the next decade.

The tech war between AI and quantum computing is certainly fascinating.

But for Bitcoin, a deeper war has already begun:

Not a war between humans and machines.

But a war between old cryptography and new computing power.

What ultimately determines whether Bitcoin survives the quantum era may not be how fast quantum computers get.

It's whether, after humanity knows the locks must be changed—

we can change them faster than the lock-pickers can break in.

Disclaimer

This article is compiled based on public research materials from Google, Nature, NIST, Bitcoin Improvement Proposals, and academic sources. It is intended solely for research and discussion on technology, cryptography, and digital asset industries, and does not constitute any buy or sell recommendation for Bitcoin, crypto assets, or other investment products. There is currently no public evidence that any quantum computer possesses the practical capability to break the elliptic curve cryptography used by Bitcoin. All figures regarding future qubit requirements, runtime, and technological maturity timelines are research estimates and may change significantly with advances in hardware, algorithms, and quantum error correction. Digital asset prices are highly volatile; investors should make independent judgments and fully assess risks.