2/17/26
“A person is smart. People are dumb, panicky, dangerous animals, and you know it.” - Agent K from Men in Black
The early 2026 narrative on Bitcoin looks increasingly negative. Outside of the wider tech equity/currency/precious metals volatility, Bitcoin is also being uniquely dragged on the crypto twitter timelines for it’s alleged “quantum risk”. As someone with no background in cryptography or economics and maybe a high double digit IQ, this puts me in the upper echelons of intelligence of crypto people, so I decided to research what (if any) existential risk quantum poses BTC.
The TLDR is that my hands are still diamond and my eyes are still laser and yours should be too, but below I’ll explain the technical architecture of Bitcoin, how it clashes with quantum computing, and what can be done to address this.
To wrap up the set of thoughts listed out above, it is (1) unclear when actual production quantum computers will be performant enough to begin finding private keys, (2) even when those computers are ready, BTC held in cold wallets (where the private key is safe and no public key or public signature has been generated) is and will remain safe, and (3) we already have PQC secure algorithms that we can upgrade to to ensure that future transactions do not lead to private key discovery.
That said, people should still consider moving their BTC to a new unused wallet soon, and they should certainly do it once the protocol has reached a consensus on a new PQC secured transaction scheme has been adopted. It’s probably worth checking in on Bitcoin developer forums every few months or quarters to get a feel for how close they are to consensus on a protocol upgrade.
Personally, I am continuing to buy BTC. I think that while the quantum risk is a nontrivial but nonlethal 10yr headwind, it is sufficiently countervailed by the 10yr tailwinds (dedollarization, self-custodial ownership, younger investors looking for inflation hedges, etc). Furthermore, the day Satoshi’s coins move due to a quantum attack, I anticipate BTC prices collapsing due to uninformed investor fear, and this will probably be the single best day to buy BTC in its history (other than its inception).
If you have any questions, disagreements, or want to talk about the above, feel free to reach out to me at [email protected]