Nic Carter: Quantum computing could endanger 1.7 million Bitcoin

Castle Island Ventures co-founder Nic Carter said on Dec. 20 that quantum computing is only an "extremely difficult" engineering challenge away from breaking Bitcoin and would not require new discoveries in fundamental physics, BlockBeats reports. He wrote that Bitcoin could adopt post-quantum signature schemes through a soft fork, but key obstacles include choosing a specific scheme, coordinating the fork process, and migrating balances across tens of millions of addresses. Carter warned that mitigation may take nearly ten years and that 1.7 million BTC in abandoned addresses could face sudden theft even after a post-quantum upgrade unless holders collectively agree to seize those coins, a step he described as unprecedented in Bitcoin's history.