Quantus says the industry may need to plan for a timeline near 2030, not a distant future. It cites recent work from Google, IBM, Quantinuum, and other researchers as evidence that error correction, gate fidelity, and resource estimates keep improving.
The challenge looks harder for blockchains than for traditional internet systems. Public keys can remain visible on-chain once exposed. Wallet makers, , custodians, validators, and governance bodies would all need to coordinate a migration.
Quantus chief executive Christopher Smith said users may face pressure if the industry waits too long. The report also says 2.3 million to 3.7 million bitcoins may be permanently lost as owners no longer control the private keys. Those coins cannot move to quantum-safe addresses.
The technical burden would also be large. A standard Bitcoin ECDSA signature and public key carry about 97 bytes of cryptographic payload. A comparable transaction using ML-DSA-87 carries about 7,187 bytes, or roughly 70 times more. That size increase would add pressure to the block space.
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