Bitcoin community warns: Quantum defense upgrades may take five to ten years
Bitcoin stands at a high of $88,000, but the threat of quantum computers has made the 5 to 10-year upgrade schedule a new focus in the market, exposing the fragility and costs of decentralized governance.
(Preliminary summary: Fidelity analysts: Bitcoin will be a "fallow year" in 2026, with a support range of 65,000 to 75,000 US dollars)
(Background supplement: Arthur Hayes predicts that Bitcoin will bottom out in January: the Federal Reserve will use disguised QE, and I have All-in 90% of assets)
Contents of this article
Bitcoin price will be maintained at the end of 2025 At the high end of $88,000, the first year of the Trump administration has been uneventful. However, behind the seemingly stable market, an anxiety about the structure of survival is spreading - the shadow of quantum computers.
The cost of decentralization: collective action in the tenth grade
Casa co-founder Jameson Lopp recently proposed that it may take 5 to 10 years to fully upgrade Bitcoin to a "post-quantum era" standard that can withstand quantum attacks. He emphasized that Bitcoin faces a typical collective action problem.
“It would easily take 5 to 10 years to make detailed modifications to the protocol and complete an unprecedented fund migration.”
Lack of rapid updates of CEO instructions, every change in Bitcoin must pass the consensus vote of miners, node operators and developers around the world. This deliberately slowed down mechanism constitutes the "democratic cost" of a network worth trillions of dollars.
Technical factions are calm and capitalist factions are anxious
Technical circles are not in a hurry to sound the alarm. Blockstream CEO Adam Back and JAN3 CEO Samson Mow have repeatedly emphasized that current quantum computers cannot even decompose "21" and are not enough to shake the Bitcoin encryption layer. They advocate prudent progress and avoid introducing new vulnerabilities for the sake of long-term risks. In contrast, capital markets appear nervous. Capriole Investments founder Charles Edwards warned in a related technology debate record that if a quantum-resistant solution is not seen before 2028, a drop in confidence may cause prices to fall below $50,000. The venture capital circle is even more worried about the "Harvest Now, Decrypt Later" strategy: attackers save encrypted data first and then crack it after ten years when the quantum hardware matures, which means that the long upgrade cycle has very little room for error.
25% of “sleeping coins” reveal security cracks
The specific figures are also unsettling. At present, about 25% of Bitcoins still stay in old P2PK addresses that are vulnerable to Shor algorithm attacks, with a cumulative market value of hundreds of billions of dollars. Even if the community advances hybrid signature proposals such as BIP-360, if currency holders do not actively transfer, these "sleeping Bitcoins" will still be exposed to quantum threats. The data volume of quantum-resistant signatures may be 4 to 32 times larger than current solutions, which means that in the future, transaction fees and block sizes on the chain will expand simultaneously, and network congestion may become the norm.
Betting on the Quantum Countdown
From governance efficiency to physical limits, Bitcoin’s quantum migration is a marathon that tests consensus, patience and capital costs. Ten years is almost an eternity on Wall Street and Silicon Valley, but it is a necessary rhythm for decentralized systems to maintain security. In the next 5 to 10 years, in addition to keeping an eye on the market, investors will also have to pay attention to whether the underlying protocol has successfully evolved. Only by surviving the quantum winter can Bitcoin continue to defend the narrative of “digital gold.”
