Google’s recent announcement of successful quantum computing could spell doom for 4 million bitcoins.

Bitcoin is a massively juicy target for a quantum computing criminal. Financial analysts have long predicted that quantum computing is a huge risk to cryptocurrencies. Why?

It’s because quantum computing is leagues ahead of contemporary computing. Google’s October announcement said its Sycamore chip performed a computation in 200 seconds that would take the world’s fastest supercomputer 10,000 years.

Conceivably, a criminal could unleash this brute computing power on cryptocurrencies and make mincemeat out of their private keys. That’s an easy-to-pick bonanza of 4 million bitcoins worth $28.5 billion.

That’s a Deloitte estimate

A Deloitte article says bitcoin held in “pay to public key” (p2pk) addresses are more vulnerable to a quantum attack because their public keys are exposed on the ledger by default. A quantum criminal could theoretically manipulate this data to obtain a private key. The use of these types of addresses was common in the early days of Bitcoin. Reused p2pkh (a later version) addresses are also at risk.

According to one estimate, about 4 million bitcoin reside on vulnerable addresses that are not in use or reuse. A rough valuation of this trove is $28.5 billion.

Protecting your bitcoin wealth from quantum hackers

Says Deloitte: “We explained that p2pk and reused p2pkh addresses are vulnerable to quantum attacks. However, p2pkh addresses that have never been used to spend Bitcoins are safe, as their public keys are not yet public. This means that if you transfer your Bitcoins to a new p2pkh address, then they should not be vulnerable to a quantum attack.”

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