Analytics firm Glassnode analyzed how much of Bitcoin’s supply is at risk due to quantum computing and what its composition looks like.
An estimated 6.04 million Bitcoins are exposed to quantum risk
In a new X article, Glassnode talked about how much of the circulating Bitcoin supply is exposed to the risk posed by quantum computing. “Quantum computing” refers to an emerging class of computers that can, in theory, be powerful enough to break advanced cryptographic systems. Bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies could be examples of such systems.
Although quantum computing has been something “coming” for years now, the technology has recently made some advancements that have many in the digital assets industry talking about its possible implications for the industry.
For Bitcoin, the main threat from quantum computing is to the supply that sits in vulnerable wallets. “The relevant threshold is whether the public key needed to spend a coin is already visible on-chain,” Glassnode noted.
Based on these criteria, the analytics firm estimated that 6.04 million tokens were vulnerable to potential quantum computing attacks. In terms of supply percentage, these coins represent over 30% of all BTC in existence today.
The supply threatened by the threat of quantum computing can be divided into two categories. As Glassnode explains:
The first is structural exposure: outputs whose script type reveals the public key at its conception. The second is operational exposure: coins that may have been initially protected, but for which address reuse, partial spending, or curation behavior have already made the public key visible while BTC remains tied to it.
Below is a chart that shows how the supply composition of Bitcoin has changed in terms of these two categories over the years.
Looks like the operationally unsafe supply has grown in size | Source: Glassnode on X
As the chart shows, much of Bitcoin’s supply was structurally unsafe during the cryptocurrency’s early years. This is naturally because early wallets were not as secure as those used today.
Over the years and as investors adopted better portfolio standards, the structurally unsafe supply shrank to just 9.6%. However, 20.6% of the supply is still in the operationally dangerous category. This part of the offering has actually seen some growth in recent years.
In pure numbers, the operationally dangerous supply currently includes around 4.12 million BTC, as shown in the chart below.
The breakdown of the BTC supply by quantum safety | Source: Glassnode on X
Meanwhile, the structurally unsafe supply consists of 1.92 million BTC, while the safe supply comprises 13.99 million BTC.
BTC Price
At the time of writing, Bitcoin is floating around $77,000, down more than 3% over the past seven days.
The price of the coin seems to have declined recently | Source: BTCUSDT on TradingView
Featured image of Dall-E, chart from TradingView.com
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