Bitcoin Moves Toward Post-Quantum Defense With BIP 360 as CoinShares Says Only 10,230 BTC Face Near-Term Risk

Draft Soft Fork Proposal Targets Taproot Key Exposure While Wallet Makers Debate “Fear Tax” as Hardware Scale Gap Persists

TL;DR

• BIP 360, a draft soft fork introducing Pay-to-Merkle-Root, was merged into the Bitcoin BIPs repository on Feb 13, 2026.
• CoinShares estimates 10,230 BTC are currently vulnerable to quantum attacks out of 1.63 million BTC in exposed-key addresses.
• Researchers cite 13 million physical qubits needed to reverse a key within one day, versus today’s 105-qubit machines.

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Bitcoin developers have formally advanced a draft soft fork proposal known as BIP 360, introducing a new output type called Pay-to-Merkle-Root, or P2MR, designed to mitigate quantum vulnerabilities linked to exposed public keys in Taproot addresses. The proposal, authored by Hunter Beast, Ethan Heilman and Isabel Foxen Duke, is listed in the official Bitcoin Improvement Proposals repository under consensus changes. The merge was reported on Feb 13, 2026, marking its formal inclusion as a draft BIP rather than an activated protocol upgrade.

P2MR seeks to preserve Taproot’s scripting flexibility while eliminating the quantum-vulnerable key-path spending route present in Pay-to-Taproot outputs. Proposal documentation references concerns that sufficiently advanced quantum systems could eventually exploit elliptic curve cryptography, specifically secp256k1, which underpins Bitcoin signatures. The explainer material states that industry roadmaps suggest machines capable of decrypting ECDSA could emerge in “as little as 2–5 years,” while also citing a U.S. federal mandate to phase out ECDSA by 2035.

Discussion around the proposal coincided with renewed attention on quantum hardware advances, including references to a 105-qubit processor known as Willow. While these developments have fueled debate, CoinShares researcher Christopher Bendiksen argued that quantum exposure is narrower than often portrayed, stating that only 10,230 BTC currently sit in addresses with publicly visible keys susceptible to quantum compromise. That subset comes from an analyzed pool of 1.63 million BTC in exposed-key addresses. Bendiksen said a little over 7,000 BTC are held in wallets containing 100–1,000 BTC, while approximately 3,230 BTC are in wallets holding 1,000–10,000 BTC.

He noted that the combined total at risk in those larger wallets amounts to roughly $719.1 million at prevailing valuations, describing the figure as “routine trade” scale within crypto markets. Bendiksen added that the remaining 1.62 million BTC are held in wallets under 100 BTC, and said that even under an “outlandishly optimistic” quantum progression scenario, it could take “a millennium to compromise each one.”

Separate analysis cited in the coverage states that breaking secp256k1 would require millions of logical qubits. One estimate indicates that reversing a Bitcoin public key within one day would demand about 13 million physical qubits, roughly 100,000× beyond the largest existing quantum computer. Achieving the same result within one hour would require systems approximately 3 million× more powerful than current hardware.

Ripple Chief Technology Officer David Schwartz weighed in on Feb 12, warning that Bitcoin would likely “need a fork to be quantum proof.” He said, “For 99% of what makes bitcoin interesting, all the blockchain needs to be able to do is allow people to rely on being able to hold and transfer bitcoin in the future. That doesn’t require any technology that isn’t available in every public blockchain out there.”

Meanwhile, hardware wallet makers and security firms have begun marketing so-called quantum-ready products following the National Institute of Standards and Technology’s finalization of its first post-quantum cryptography standards in 2024, which called for migrations before 2030. Alexei Zamyatin, co-founder of BOB, said, “I do feel that it is a bit of a fear tax. We know that quantum computers are far away — still five to 15 years away.”

Ada of qLabs countered that risk accumulation is gradual, citing “harvest now, decrypt later” strategies as a practical concern. Wallet developers have introduced products branded with post-quantum signature schemes and firmware protections, while acknowledging that full network-level resilience would require protocol changes.

Bitcoin was trading roughly 50% below its October 2025 all-time high at the time of reporting, according to COIN360 crypto price data, as investors tracked developments affecting the broader coin market cap and crypto price index metrics.

This article has been refined and enhanced by ChatGPT.