Bitcoin holders have been spooked by a massive, surprise attack on one of the most trusted hardware wallets this week, with an urgent “AI reckoning” warning issued.
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The bitcoin price has dropped following the $100 million attack, sweeping aside short term hopes that the bitcoin price could be on the verge of a $27.9 trillion game-changer.
Now, as SpaceX and Tesla billionaire Elon Musk issues a prediction that could change everything, bitcoin is facing a fresh threat from quantum computers, which could undermine crypto security in as little as three years.
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Bitcoin is suddenly braced for a looming quantum computing threat that could collapse the bitcoin price.
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“I think you should give yourself three of four years, and at that point, I would get rather paranoid about it,” IMB chief executive Arvind Krishna told CNBC’s Mad Money, when asked about the threat of cryptography-breaking quantum computers.
“That’s not that long… people should listen to that,” Mad Money host Jim Cramer said.
The development of a fully-fledged quantum computer could, in theory, break the digital signature codes that protect bitcoin wallets, with recent research suggesting almost 7 million bitcoin worth nearly $500 billion at risk.
Krishna said investors won’t have to wait much longer for quantum computing to become a meaningful business line for the enterprise software and mainframes technology company, known as Big Blue.
“I think that in 2028 or 2029, you’ll see it have a measurable impact on our top line and bottom line,” Krishna said. “By the end of the 2030s, we are now pretty convinced this is a trillion dollars of value.”
Fears around the quantum computing threat to bitcoin and crypto have swirled since the end of 2025, crystallising in March of this year when Google researchers published a paper that warned that future quantum computers may be able to break some of the cryptography protecting bitcoin and other digital assets with fewer resources than previously thought.
“We urge all vulnerable cryptocurrency communities to join the migration to [post-quantum computing] without delay,” the Google researchers, which were joined by coauthors including Justin Drake of the Ethereum Foundation, Dan Boneh of Stanford, wrote in the paper.
The researchers did not indicate it was possible to break bitcoin’s cryptography today but warned such an attack could be closer than earlier estimates suggested.
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The bitcoin price has collapse since hitting an all-time high in October of 2025, with some fearing bitcoin could be about to crash far lower.
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However, while IBM’s accelerated quantum computing timeline and the Google warning have catapulted the debate over quantum resistent cryptography to the fore, many bitcoin and crypto traders have cheered Jim Cramer’s exit from bitcoin.
“If Cramer is selling, it’s time to start buying,” Archie Spencer, the founder of Grit Trading Academy, posted to X.
“Every time Cramer says sell, I add to my position. Been doing it since 2018. The inverse Cramer index remains undefeated,” pseudonymous crypto investor Bitcoin & Barbells posted, referring to the tongue-in-cheek “inverse Cramer” meme that suggests traders should do the opposite of his suggestions.