Is Quantum Computing Really an Imminent Threat to Bitcoin? Why Wang Chun Calls It a Bubble

Every few months, a new wave of headlines claims that quantum computers are about to make Bitcoin obsolete. The storyline is simple and dramatic: once a powerful enough quantum machine goes live, it will instantly be able to derive private keys from public addresses, rewrite the ledger, and drain wallets across the network.

Against this backdrop, F2Pool co-founder Wang Chun has taken a very different stance. He argues that fears about an imminent quantum attack on Bitcoin are overstated, calling the narrative a kind of “bubble” in itself. In his view, and in the view of long-time cryptographer Adam Back from Blockstream, practical attacks on Bitcoin’s cryptography are still many decades away. The real risk today is not that a quantum machine will secretly overturn the system next year, but that investors and developers become distracted by speculative doom scenarios instead of focusing on realistic, nearer-term challenges.

This article unpacks that perspective in detail. Rather than simply repeating that the threat is distant, we will examine what it would actually take to compromise Bitcoin using quantum hardware, where current research stands, and how the ecosystem could respond over time. The goal is not to dismiss quantum computing as irrelevant, but to replace fear-based narratives with a grounded understanding of timelines, incentives and upgrade paths.

1. Why Bitcoin and Quantum Computing Keep Getting Mentioned Together

Bitcoin’s security model rests on two primary pillars:

Proof-of-work protects the ordering of transactions and makes it costly to reorganize the chain.
Public-key cryptography – specifically the ECDSA scheme over the secp256k1 curve – secures individual user balances by making it computationally infeasible to derive a private key from a public one.

Classical computers would need an astronomically large amount of time to guess a Bitcoin private key by brute force. The search space is so vast that, for practical purposes, it is considered unreachable.

Quantum computing changes the conversation because of Shor’s algorithm, a quantum procedure that dramatically reduces the time needed to solve certain mathematical problems, including those underlying many public-key systems. In theory, a sufficiently powerful quantum computer running Shor’s algorithm could derive private keys from public keys for systems like RSA and elliptic-curve cryptography.

The keyword, however, is “sufficiently powerful”. This is where Wang Chun’s skepticism comes in.

2. What a Real Quantum Attack on Bitcoin Would Require

To understand why many specialists believe the risk is decades away, we need to look at the engineering requirements behind a practical attack. It is not enough to say, “Shor’s algorithm breaks elliptic curves.” The algorithm has to run on a real machine subject to noise, error and physical limitations.

2.1 From logical qubits to physical qubits

Quantum algorithms are usually described in terms of logical qubits—idealized units of quantum information that behave perfectly. Real hardware, however, is imperfect. Qubits interact with their environment and lose coherence. Gates introduce noise. To keep errors from overwhelming the computation, engineers use error-correcting codes, which spread a single logical qubit across many physical qubits.

Estimates for breaking a single 256-bit elliptic-curve key suggest the need for:

Hundreds of logical qubits, and
Potentially millions of physical qubits once full error correction is included.

Not only that, but the machine would need to maintain low error rates over an extremely long sequence of quantum gates. Current devices are in what researchers call the NISQ era (Noisy Intermediate-Scale Quantum): they have tens to low thousands of qubits, limited coherence times, and are primarily useful for experimentation, not for breaking industrial-grade cryptography.

This gulf between theory and practice is one reason why Wang Chun considers the immediate-threat narrative to be inflated. From his vantage point in the mining industry, he sees how difficult it is just to scale classical ASIC hardware in a predictable way. Quantum hardware is orders of magnitude more complex and fragile.

2.2 Time, cost and secrecy constraints

Even if a state-level actor were willing to invest heavily in quantum hardware for strategic reasons, three constraints remain:

1. Time to compute. Breaking a key has to be fast enough to be economically meaningful. If it takes years of runtime on an exotic machine to compromise a single address, the attack is mostly theoretical.

2. Cost of hardware and energy. If the cost per broken key dwarfs the potential benefit, the attack is irrational from a resource-allocation perspective.

3. Difficulty of hiding progress. A machine capable of breaking Bitcoin’s elliptic-curve cryptography at scale would represent a giant leap beyond current hardware. It is unlikely that such a capability could be developed, deployed and used repeatedly in complete secrecy, especially given the global interest in quantum research.

When experts like Adam Back argue that we are still decades away from this point, they are factoring in not only qubit counts but also error correction, stability, cost and the likelihood that any breakthrough would be visible long before it threatened the network.

3. The Specific Way Bitcoin Is Exposed – and Why That Matters

Another important nuance is that Bitcoin addresses do not all expose public keys in the same way.

For modern address types, the public key is only revealed on-chain when a transaction spends from that output.
Before the first spend, observers only see a hash. Hash functions are believed to be more resistant to near-term quantum speedups; Grover’s algorithm yields only a quadratic advantage, which can be compensated for with longer hashes.

This means that even in a scenario where a sufficiently powerful quantum computer existed, an attacker would have to target addresses whose public keys are already visible on-chain—for example, older outputs or frequently reused deposit addresses. Long-term best practice has been to avoid unnecessary key reuse for precisely this reason.

The upshot: the worst-case, science-fiction scenario where a quantum machine instantly empties every wallet in existence does not match Bitcoin’s actual design. The exposure is significant but more contained, and it can be reduced over time as users migrate to upgraded address formats.

4. Why Wang Chun Calls the Fear a “Bubble”

From the perspective of someone who has operated a major mining pool for many years, the gap between headlines and technical reality can be striking. Wang Chun’s description of the quantum panic as a “bubble” captures several dynamics:

1. Narrative overshoot. Stories that suggest Bitcoin will be broken “any day now” generate attention but often gloss over the engineering complexities just discussed.

2. Misdirected priorities. If the community becomes obsessed with distant scenarios, it can under-invest in solving near-term challenges such as fee dynamics, client robustness, user education and regulatory clarity.

3. Commercial incentives. Quantum anxiety can be used to market products, conferences or research agendas. That does not make the underlying field illegitimate, but it does mean that some commentary is designed to attract interest rather than to provide balanced risk assessment.

Adam Back’s alignment with this view adds credibility. As a cryptographer whose work predates Bitcoin and who has spent decades thinking about proof-of-work and privacy, he is well placed to compare theoretical algorithms with the messy reality of physical hardware. When he says the threat is distant but preparation is wise, he is not dismissing quantum computing; he is applying the same risk-management mindset that underpins Bitcoin itself.

5. Preparing Without Panicking: What a Sensible Roadmap Looks Like

Recognizing that the immediate threat is limited does not mean ignoring quantum advances altogether. Instead, a mature ecosystem should treat quantum resistance as a long-term migration problem, similar to past transitions such as:

The move from single-signature scripts to multisignature arrangements.
The introduction of SegWit and Taproot to improve efficiency and flexibility.
Upgrades in wallet software to support new address formats over time.

A realistic roadmap has several components.

5.1 Monitoring hardware progress

First, developers and researchers continuously track progress in quantum hardware: qubit counts, error rates, coherence times and gate speeds. These metrics improve gradually, not overnight. That gives protocol engineers time to respond before any single machine reaches the threshold needed to threaten widely used cryptographic schemes.

5.2 Evaluating post-quantum primitives

Second, the cryptography community is actively designing and standardizing post-quantum algorithms—systems believed to remain secure even in the presence of quantum computers. Many of these rely on mathematical structures such as lattices, codes or multivariate polynomials.

For Bitcoin, the challenge is not only to find an algorithm that is quantum-resistant, but also to satisfy constraints around transaction size, verification speed, and compatibility with existing script capabilities. Experiments and academic prototypes exist today, but production-grade deployments in a high-value public network require extreme caution.

5.3 Planning a migration path

Third, any transition would need a carefully staged migration:

New address types could be introduced that use post-quantum signatures.
Wallets would gradually encourage users to move funds from older outputs to new ones, similar to how SegWit adoption unfolded.
Protocol rules might eventually set deadlines after which certain legacy formats are discouraged or carry additional risk warnings.

This process could take many years by itself, which is exactly why experts argue that starting the design work early is wise, even if fully capable quantum computers are not expected for several decades.

6. What Investors Should Take Away from the Debate

For everyday participants, it can be difficult to separate marketing, fear and genuine technical risk. The discussion sparked by Wang Chun’s comments offers a useful framework.

6.1 The near term: business as usual

In the next few years, the probability that a quantum computer will quietly compromise Bitcoin’s core cryptography is extremely low. The necessary hardware is not just slightly beyond reach; it is orders of magnitude away from today’s devices in terms of qubit quality and quantity.

From a portfolio perspective, that means quantum risk is best viewed as a long-duration, low-probability tail event, not as a factor that should drive day-to-day decisions. Price movements over the coming cycle are far more likely to be shaped by macro conditions, regulatory developments, adoption trends and internal dynamics like transaction fees or layer-two growth.

6.2 The medium term: watch the signals, not the headlines

Over the medium term, investors can monitor a few concrete indicators rather than reacting to every article:

Announcements about large-scale, error-corrected quantum machines from credible manufacturers.
Progress in standardizing post-quantum cryptographic schemes at the international level.
Discussions within Bitcoin Core, the research community and major wallet providers about potential upgrade paths.

When these three streams of information begin to converge—i.e., when practical hardware approaches the thresholds needed to run Shor’s algorithm at scale, and when the ecosystem has candidate algorithms ready—then quantum migration will shift from academic topic to concrete engineering program.

6.3 The long term: resilience through adaptability

A final point, often overlooked in dramatic narratives, is that Bitcoin is not frozen in time. The system has already undergone significant upgrades while preserving its monetary rules. If the community reaches broad consensus that a post-quantum transition is necessary, it can be staged in a way that respects decentralization and minimizes disruption.

In other words, the long-term question is not, “Will quantum computers destroy Bitcoin?” but rather, “How smoothly will Bitcoin incorporate new cryptographic tools as they become necessary?” Wang Chun’s stance can be read as a reminder of this adaptability. The network’s resilience comes not only from mathematics but also from a culture of cautious, incremental improvement.

7. Separating Science Fiction from Engineering Reality

Quantum computing is an exciting field, and it is natural that it captures the imagination of both technologists and the broader public. But excitement can easily morph into anxiety, especially when complex topics are compressed into a few sentences on social media.

The perspective shared by Wang Chun and Adam Back cuts through that noise. Their message, simplified, is:

The cryptographic challenges posed by fully mature quantum computers are real and deserve careful planning.
However, current hardware is nowhere near the scale required to threaten Bitcoin’s elliptic-curve signatures in practice.
Developers already have time to research, test and eventually deploy quantum-resistant alternatives long before a credible attack becomes feasible.

Rather than treating quantum computing as an approaching catastrophe, it is more accurate to see it as part of a broader, decades-long evolution in information security. The internet has already migrated through several generations of cryptographic standards; Bitcoin, as a long-lived monetary network, is likely to follow a similar path.

8. Conclusion: Vigilance Without Alarmism

Concerns about quantum computing and Bitcoin tend to oscillate between two extremes: either the technology is dismissed as irrelevant, or it is portrayed as an immediate existential threat. The reality lies somewhere in between. Quantum research is progressing, but turning that research into a machine capable of breaking Bitcoin’s cryptography at scale requires advances in qubit count, error correction, stability and cost that are still far over the horizon.

By calling the current fear a “bubble”, Wang Chun is not saying that preparation is unnecessary. He is saying that panic is not a strategy. A better approach is calm, steady work: monitoring hardware progress, developing post-quantum tools and designing migration paths long before they are needed.

For investors and users, the practical takeaway is clear. In the near and medium term, the factors that matter most for Bitcoin’s trajectory are adoption, regulation, macroeconomics and the network’s own internal innovation—not hypothetical secret quantum machines. At the same time, paying attention to serious research on quantum-resistant cryptography is sensible, both for Bitcoin and for the broader digital infrastructure that society increasingly depends on.

If there is one lesson to carry forward, it is this: sound engineering thrives on realistic threat models, not on fear. Bitcoin was built to survive in a hostile environment by combining conservative assumptions with open-source collaboration. The quantum era, whenever it fully arrives, will be another test of that philosophy—but not a surprise ambush from tomorrow’s headlines.

Disclaimer: This article is for educational and informational purposes only and should not be considered investment, financial, or legal advice. Digital assets are volatile and involve risk, including the possible loss of principal. Always conduct your own research and consider consulting a qualified professional before making financial decisions.