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World desk10 min

How Bitcoin’s Quantum Risk Compares With Ethereum’s

Bitcoin can hide some public keys until a UTXO is spent; Ethereum exposes an account’s public key after it sends a transaction. Neither network has completed a post-quantum transition.
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Neither Bitcoin nor Ethereum is quantum-resistant today. A sufficiently capable quantum computer could use Shor’s algorithm to derive private keys from exposed elliptic-curve public keys, but no cryptographically relevant quantum computer is known to exist. The practical difference is exposure: Bitcoin’s UTXO model can keep some public keys hidden until a spend, while an Ethereum account that has sent a transaction has exposed its public key onchain. Both networks still need protocol-level changes for a full post-quantum transition.

What quantum computing could threaten

The central concern is not that a quantum computer would automatically “break a blockchain.” It is that Shor’s algorithm could, on a sufficiently capable machine, derive a private key from its corresponding public key. A private key authorizes spending, so a successful derivation could let an attacker forge a valid signature and take control of funds associated with that key.

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Bitcoin and Ethereum both rely on elliptic-curve cryptography for important authorization signatures. Bitcoin spends use ECDSA or Schnorr signatures, depending on the output and spending method. Ethereum account transactions use ECDSA signatures. A quantum attack against those signature systems is therefore a shared underlying risk, not a reason to declare one chain categorically safe and the other unsafe.

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This risk should also be distinguished from attacks on hashing. The comparison here concerns public-key signatures and exposure of their public keys; it does not establish that Bitcoin mining hashes are vulnerable to the same attack. Quantum risk is not one universal property of a network: it depends on which cryptographic component is used, how it is exposed, and whether the protocol can replace it.

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Bitcoin and Ethereum expose public keys differently

Question Bitcoin Ethereum
How does a typical spend or transaction authorize activity? UTXO spends use ECDSA or Schnorr signatures. Account transactions use ECDSA signatures.
When can a public key be visible? Some outputs commit to a public-key hash and reveal the key only when spent. Reuse and key-revealing output types expose keys earlier or for longer. An account that has sent a transaction exposes its public key onchain. A receive-only account reveals an address hash, not its public key, according to Ethereum.org.
What preparations are described? BIP 360 and BIP 361 are proposals, not deployed network changes. The Ethereum Foundation has a dedicated post-quantum team and a directional program spanning consensus, data, and execution.
Has a full post-quantum transition been completed? No. No.

Why Bitcoin’s UTXO model can reduce some exposure

Bitcoin tracks unspent transaction outputs, or UTXOs: individual chunks of bitcoin that can be spent by satisfying the conditions attached to each output. Some output types commit to a public-key hash rather than publishing the public key itself. If a user spends from a fresh output of this kind, the public key may remain hidden while the bitcoin sits unspent.

That is a reduction in at-rest exposure, not a guarantee of protection. The key becomes visible when the output is spent, and common practices can reveal it sooner or leave it exposed for longer. Reusing an address can expose a key associated with funds that remain there; some output types reveal keys directly. A transaction also makes its public key visible while it is waiting in the mempool, before confirmation.

BIP 360 distinguishes between long-exposure attacks, which target keys visible longer than the mempool interval, and short-exposure attacks that attempt to exploit the period while a transaction is unconfirmed. The distinction matters because even an output that hides a key at rest can create a window of exposure when its owner spends it. Neither exposure pattern proves that an attack is feasible today; it describes what a future attacker might target if a cryptographically relevant machine becomes available.

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BIP 361 states that more than 34% of all bitcoin had revealed a public key onchain as of 2026-03-01. That is the proposal’s estimate for that date, not an independently validated measurement or a statement that those coins have been stolen or can be stolen now. It indicates that public-key exposure is already a material migration concern, particularly for older or reused outputs.

Why Ethereum account exposure is more routine for active accounts

Ethereum uses persistent accounts rather than Bitcoin’s UTXO structure. When an Ethereum account sends a transaction, its public key can be recovered from the transaction signature and is exposed onchain. An address that has only received ether exposes an address hash rather than the public key, but activity changes the exposure picture: once the account has sent a transaction, its public key is available to observe.

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This difference is about what is visible onchain, not a claim that an active Ethereum account is currently under attack. A public key is not the same thing as a private key, and deriving the latter still depends on a sufficiently capable quantum computer. Ethereum’s account model does, however, make public-key exposure a more routine feature for accounts that transact.

Ethereum has cryptographic surfaces beyond ordinary account transactions. Validators use BLS signatures for consensus. The Ethereum.org materials also identify KZG commitments in the scaling roadmap and some elliptic-curve-based zero-knowledge proof systems as areas that need attention. A migration therefore cannot be reduced to replacing one wallet signature: protocol designers must consider consensus, data availability, execution, and applications that use their own cryptographic primitives.

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What Bitcoin’s proposals would change

BIP 360: reduce one kind of exposed-key risk

BIP 360 proposes Pay-to-Merkle-Root (P2MR), a script-tree output type modeled on P2TR but without the quantum-vulnerable key-path spend. Its aim is to mitigate a class of public-key exposure by changing how outputs can be spent. It is a proposal, not a feature that users can assume is active on Bitcoin today.

P2MR should not be mistaken for a complete post-quantum signature system. Removing a key-path spend can address a specific exposure route, but a full transition requires post-quantum authorization mechanisms and broad support across wallets, nodes, and the network. A proposed output type is one piece of a possible response, not proof that Bitcoin has replaced elliptic-curve signatures.

BIP 361: a broader migration proposal

BIP 361 describes a wider migration with a permitted-spend phase after activation and a later tightening of ECDSA and Schnorr verification. Its phases are defined relative to activation; they are not a live network schedule or a promise of a particular calendar date. Because it would affect which signatures and spends the network accepts, implementation would require coordination and decisions about legacy funds.

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Dormant, lost, or inaccessible bitcoin raise a difficult question for any migration that eventually limits legacy signatures. A protocol can change what it accepts, but it cannot make an owner recover a lost key or automatically identify a rightful claimant to an inactive output. The proposals therefore bring governance and distribution questions alongside the technical work. BIP 360 and BIP 361 have different scopes: one proposes an output-level mitigation, while the other sets out a broader migration and eventual signature-verification change.

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Ethereum’s preparation spans more protocol layers

The Ethereum Foundation’s Post-Quantum team describes a work program that covers consensus, data, and execution. Among the areas it identifies are hash-based validator signatures such as leanXMSS, a minimal zkVM or leanVM approach to aggregation, post-quantum data availability and blobs, execution-layer signature precompiles, and longer-term work on post-quantum transactions and consensus.

For users, account abstraction and signature agility are important because they could give accounts a route to change their authorization method without treating every account as permanently tied to one signature scheme. The Foundation’s materials describe these as avenues for migration, not completed changes that already protect accounts. Smart contracts may need separate upgrades if they rely internally on cryptographic primitives that are vulnerable; changing an account’s outer signature does not automatically update every contract’s logic.

The Foundation calls its roadmap a living document reflecting rough directional consensus. Its content can change through research and governance, so listed work should not be read as a guaranteed delivery sequence or date. Ethereum has a more structured public work program in the cited materials, but that is evidence of preparation, not evidence of a completed transition or superior current security against quantum attacks.

Why replacing signatures is not a simple software update

Post-quantum cryptography is not a single drop-in replacement. NIST finalized FIPS 203, a key-encapsulation standard; FIPS 204, a module-lattice digital-signature standard; and FIPS 205, a stateless hash-based digital-signature standard on 2024-08-13. These standards give implementers defined cryptographic options, but they do not themselves modify either blockchain or make its wallets and consensus rules compatible with those options.

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Signatures designed to resist quantum attacks may be larger and less friendly to aggregation than the schemes used today. On a blockchain, that can affect transaction size, bandwidth, storage, verification costs, and how validators combine signatures. Protocol designers must weigh those costs against security, and wallet developers must implement the new signing and recovery flows. Changes also need to reach enough nodes and users for the network to agree on which transactions are valid.

Ethereum’s migration questions include replacing validator signatures and maintaining efficient aggregation, adapting data availability and blobs, and supporting new transaction signatures. Bitcoin’s include enabling new output types, securing wallet and node uptake, and deciding how a transition interacts with exposed legacy UTXOs and dormant coins. In both ecosystems, a technically sound signature scheme is only part of the work: users need usable migration paths, and the network needs rules for funds that do not move.

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Is Ethereum more vulnerable than Bitcoin?

There is no supported one-number ranking that captures the whole comparison. Bitcoin can reduce some long-term public-key exposure when users use fresh, key-hiding outputs and avoid reuse, but spending still exposes keys and some outputs have already revealed them. Ethereum exposes the public keys of accounts after they send transactions, making exposure more routine for active accounts; receive-only addresses reveal an address hash instead.

These are different exposure patterns within a shared cryptographic problem. A ranking would also have to account for Ethereum’s validator and data-related cryptography, Bitcoin’s output and migration design, the fraction of assets with exposed keys, and how each network executes a future transition. The available materials do not establish a like-for-like measurement that justifies calling either chain quantum-safe or declaring one categorically more vulnerable overall.

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When could a quantum computer threaten these networks?

There is no dependable Q-Day date in the cited materials. The Ethereum Foundation’s Post-Quantum team said in 2026, “We do not believe a cryptographically relevant quantum computer is imminent.” That is the team’s assessment, not a universal guarantee that the timeline cannot change.

On 2026-03-31, Google Quantum AI researchers Ryan Babbush and Hartmut Neven said a new whitepaper showed future quantum computers may break elliptic-curve cryptography with fewer qubits and gates than previously realized. Their warning is a reason to prepare; it does not mean a machine capable of doing so exists today. The Foundation’s assessment and Google’s resource-estimate warning can both be true: the machine may not be imminent, while estimates of what it would take continue to evolve.

Do not treat speculative year ranges as consensus forecasts. A cryptographically relevant machine’s arrival is uncertain, and a network migration itself takes engineering, review, coordination, and user adoption. The practical conclusion is to distinguish uncertainty about the date from certainty about the need to plan for a signature transition.

What Bitcoin and Ethereum users should do now

  1. Do not move funds solely because of a speculative Q-Day prediction. The cited evidence does not establish an immediate quantum attack, and neither network has published a completed user migration that all holders should follow now.
  2. Use sound key hygiene. For Bitcoin, avoiding address reuse and using output patterns that hide public keys can reduce some at-rest exposure where supported. This is a limited hygiene measure, not a protocol-level quantum defense. It does not erase exposure from keys already revealed or prevent key disclosure when spending.
  3. Follow official protocol and wallet instructions when migration guidance exists. A future transition may require software updates, new output or account types, and specific steps to move funds. Use instructions from the relevant network and wallet developers rather than guessing at a migration or relying on a product label.
  4. Do not assume a device purchase changes network cryptography. A wallet can protect how keys are stored and used, but it cannot make a blockchain accept a post-quantum signature before the protocol supports one. The issue described here requires compatible wallet software and network rules.

What the comparison establishes—and what it does not

Both networks depend on elliptic-curve signatures that could be attacked by a sufficiently capable quantum computer, and neither has completed a full post-quantum transition. Bitcoin’s UTXO model offers ways to limit some public-key exposure at rest; Ethereum’s account model makes a sender’s public key visible after its first transaction. Ethereum’s public post-quantum program is more structured in the cited materials, while Bitcoin has proposals addressing output design and broader migration. Proposal status, roadmap activity, and current exposure are not substitutes for deployed post-quantum security.

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The Ethereum.org page reports an estimate of approximately 0.1% for quantum-vulnerable dormant-fund exposure, attributing it to Ethereum Foundation estimates. The reviewed passage does not provide a separate estimate date or define the metric in detail, so it should not be compared directly with Bitcoin’s BIP 361 public-key-exposure estimate. Neither figure, on its own, measures total quantum risk across a network.

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