Bitcoin News Today: 2028 vs. 2035: The Quantum Timeline Debate Over Bitcoin's Survival

Quantum computing's looming threat to Bitcoin has crystallized into a concrete timeline, with experts warning that the cryptocurrency's encryption could be compromised as early as March 2028. The Quantum Doomsday Clock, a project tracking advancements in quantum computing, estimates that quantum machines will need just 2 years, 4 months, and 2 days to reach the logical qubit threshold required to break Bitcoin's cryptographic defenses, according to a BeinCrypto analysis. This projection, based on exponential growth in qubit counts and improvements in error correction, has sparked urgent calls for the adoption of post-quantum cryptographic protocols, as noted in a TradingView report.

The core vulnerability lies in Bitcoin's reliance on elliptic curve cryptography (ECC-256), which requires only 1,673 logical qubits to crack using Shor's algorithm. By comparison, breaking RSA-2048 and RSA-4096 would necessitate 2,314 and 3,971 logical qubits, respectively. Those figures, derived from surface code error correction models, assume error rates between 10^-3 and 10^-5—a range that recent breakthroughs in quantum error suppression suggest could be achievable within the projected timeline, as described in the BeinCrypto analysis.

Analyst Charles Edwards, who popularized the countdown, emphasized the urgency: "If we haven't solved quantum by this point for Bitcoin... we're going down that creek without a paddle," he warned. The timeline aligns with current qubit growth trajectories, such as Google's 53-qubit Sycamore processor in 2019 and projections of 6,000+ qubits by late 2027 cited in the TradingView report. However, the project's assumptions—particularly the exponential scaling of hardware and error-rate improvements—have drawn skepticism from some quarters. Government agencies like the U.S. National Security Agency (NSA) and the UK's National Cyber Security Centre (NCSC) advocate for a more conservative approach, recommending post-quantum migrations by 2035, according to a CryptoSlate analysis.

The economic stakes are immense. Bitcoin's $2.5 trillion market cap, along with the privacy it affords users, could be at risk if quantum computers achieve the necessary scale. Legacy Bitcoin wallets using pay-to-public-key (P2PK) or reused pay-to-public-key-hash (P2PKH) addresses are particularly vulnerable, as these expose public keys on-chain. Meanwhile, the network's hash-then-reveal design offers a temporary buffer for standard P2PKH wallets, which only reveal public keys during transactions.

Industry responses are accelerating. BTQ Technologies recently demonstrated a quantum-safe Bitcoin implementation using NIST-approved ML-DSA signatures, replacing the vulnerable ECDSA algorithm. Similarly, IBM's Starling project aims to build a fault-tolerant quantum computer by 2029, while companies like Naoris Protocol and Solana are pushing for quantum-resistant upgrades.

Critics argue that the Quantum Doomsday Clock's aggressive timeline is driven by marketing agendas for post-quantum tools, rather than purely scientific consensus. A 2021 analysis by Gidney and Ekerå, cited by detractors, estimated that factoring RSA-2048 would require 20 million physical qubits at 10^-3 error rates—a scale far beyond current capabilities. Yet, proponents like Dr. Richard Carback and Colton Dillion, who developed the clock's model, stress that quantum progress is accelerating faster than expected.

As the deadline looms, the Bitcoin community faces a pivotal choice: prioritize immediate migration to post-quantum standards or risk obsolescence. With NIST's FIPS-203 and FIPS-204 standards now finalized, the tools to implement these upgrades exist. The challenge, as experts note, is not technological but economic—balancing the costs of migration against the potential losses of inaction.