Grayscale’s Zach Pandl says the Bitcoin quantum risk is less about code and more about getting the community to agree on a fix.
Crypto asset manager Grayscale is urging the industry to move faster on addressing the Bitcoin quantum risk, saying the issue is less about an immediate risk and more about how blockchains would respond if it materializes.
In a Monday blog post, April 6, Zach Pandl, the firm’s head of research, said investors should not panic as Bitcoin’s challenges “are more social than technical.” He wrote:
“Strictly from an engineering standpoint, Bitcoin has lower risk than other cryptocurrencies: it uses a UTXO model and proof-of-work consensus, does not have native smart contracts, and certain address types are not quantum vulnerable (if not reused after spending).”
Grayscale Sees Bitcoin Quantum Risk in Old Coins
Still, Pandl argues the Bitcoin community “needs to decide what to do about coins where the private key has been lost or is otherwise inaccessible.” Options include burning those coins, leaving them untouched or “deliberately slow their release.”
Pandl’s view comes after Google published research last week saying quantum computers may be closer to breaking the cryptography behind Bitcoin and other blockchains than many expected.
The paper says there are two main types of quantum computers. Faster ones, like superconducting machines, could crack keys in minutes, while slower ones could take days.
It also says attacks could happen even during live transactions, especially on networks like Bitcoin, where transactions sit in a public waiting area before being confirmed.
Google claims the only solution so far is to move to post-quantum cryptography, which is designed to resist quantum attacks, pointing to early work on networks like Algorand, Solana and XRP▼$1.12 Ledger, though admitting that most of the industry still has a long way to go.
