Is Quantum Uncertainty Cracking Bitcoin’s Store-of-Value Narrative?

On January 15, 2026, Christopher Wood rocked the Bitcoin boat with his weekly GREED & fear report. As the Global Head of Equity Strategy at Jefferies, Wood eliminated 10% Bitcoin allocation from his outlook, diverting it to 5% gold and 5% gold-mining stocks instead.

Wood’s reasoning for this decision revolves around future quantum computing breakthroughs:

“While GREED & fear does not believe that the quantum issue is about to hit the Bitcoin price dramatically in the near term, the store of value concept is clearly on less solid foundation from the standpoint of a long-term pension portfolio,”

Most recently at the World Economic Forum (WEF) in Davos, Switzerland, UBS CEO Sergio Ermotti noted in a CNBC interview that “the potential effect of quantum computing on the safety of [cryptocurrencies] still needs to be proved.”

This is not good news for Bitcoin enthusiasts. As the recent market effect from Greenland theatrics showcased, Bitcoin is still largely viewed as a risk-on asset, while gold and silver are de facto safe haven assets. 

To then add quantum uncertainty to a risk-on asset may once again foil Bitcoin’s price predictions for 2026.

Additionally, at a time of highest regulatory maturity – GENIUS Act and the potential CLARITY Act – wealth funds may turn away from a digital asset that can be nullified by future math. 

The question then is, what practical measures are being taken to remove quantum signaling from Bitcoin’s valuation? First, let’s revisit what we already know.

Viability and Timeline of Quantum Computing Threat

In December, we thoroughly examined the quality of the meat in the quantum-crypto collision. In addition to examining how exactly is Elliptic Curve Cryptography (ECC) threatened by quantum breakthroughs, we also noted that such milestones would invalidate our entire digital infrastructure stack; from basic web security to banking systems and cloud security.

In this vein, we concluded that blockchain-based ecosystems would be more resilient because they are more agile to adapt than legacy systems running on decades-old codebases. In contrast, blockchain networks can resort to hard forks to make themselves quantum-resistant.

As far as realistic timeline expectations go, to break standard ECC-256 encryption would entail having 2,000 to 2,500 logical qubits. According to IBM’s roadmap, that may be possible with its Blue Jay system beyond 2033, while Ethereum’s co-founder Vitalik Buterin thinks early preparations should start as early as 2029.

Overall, most analysts view the first half of the next decade as pivotal to more precisely outline the quantum computing viability and its potential threat against traditional cryptography. With that out of the way, what measures are being taken right now?

BTQ Technologies’ Bitcoin Quantum Testnet

On January 12, Canadian company BTQ Technologies (NASDAQ: BTQ) launched the Bitcoin Quantum testnet, as a quantum-resistant Bitcoin fork. BTQ generates revenue from hardware, software and IP licensing.

On the quantum defense front, BTQ sells QCIM and QSSN. While QCIM is a quantum-secure cryptographic hardware, QSSN is a quantum-secure stablecoin network for digital assets. On the quantum offense front, the company offers unforgeable digital signatures in the form of OSS, blockchain validation as QPoW, and QRiNG to compute truly random numbers.

With this pedigree, Bitcoin Quantum testnet represents a natural evolution of the company’s product line. Specifically, the testnet is a permissionless, open opportunity for developers to build tooling, and participate in the network to identify potential attack vectors.

Just like Bitcoin mainnet, the BQ testnet has its blockchain explorer, tracking nodes and mined blocks but with quantum-safe transactions. Unlike Bitcoin, which has up to 4MB block limit, BQ increased the block size to 64MB, replacing Bitcoin’s signature algorithm ECDSA with ML-DSA.

The National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) standardized and vetted Module-Lattice Digital Signature Algorithm (ML-DSA) as post-quantum secure. Compared to traditional Bitcoin ECDSA, quantum-resistant Bitcoin with ML-DSA represents a drastic surge in resource demand, according to Hacken:

• Signature size: from 65-73 bytes with ECDSA to 2,420 – 4,627 bytes with ML-DSA
• Public key size (compressed): from 33 bytes with ECDSA to 1,312 – 2,592 bytes with ML-DSA

This means that the ledger maintenance would require memory uptick from kilobytes to tens of hundreds of kilobytes, while signing transactions would also be slower. Despite increasing the block size limit by 16x, the network would still fit fewer transactions in a block, potentially reducing its transactions-per-second capacity.

From its early testnet stage, so far having 1 active mining pool with 6 miners, we are likely to see further refinements and bottleneck optimizations going into 2027. Only after a more mature BQ mainnet launch would it be possible to determine if it is feasible to hard fork Bitcoin mainnet to ML-DSA. 

Even in the best optimization case scenario, the bandwidth and disk space demand would entail greater centralization of Bitcoin’s network. In other words, the BTQ approach is not a magic bullet, but it is a viable research and testing framework.

Project Eleven

Led by Alex Pruden and Nic Carter, startup Project Eleven recently raised $20 million to lay the groundwork for the post-quantum computing era. 

“Useful quantum computing is the biggest and most complex threat public blockchains have ever faced.”

Nic Carter, General Partner at Castle Island Ventures

Departing from the BQ hard fork approach (or very complex soft fork), Project Eleven is pushing for broader upgrades to the Bitcoin protocol itself. Specifically:

• BIP-360 – Pay to Quantum Resistant Hash (P2QRH) as a new type of Bitcoin address that can hold both post-quantum and traditional signatures. It would be highly compatible with the existing network, but at the cost of higher fees due to aforementioned larger transaction sizes.
• Quantum-Safe Taproot- A modification of the existing Taproot to include post-quantum “escape hatch”. In other words, users transact normally until Q-Day occurs, after which only the quantum-safe method is in operation. 
• Pay to Taproot Hash (P2TRH) – Another proposal that would hide public keys on the blockchain until a transaction is executed. The contract of this window would make it exceedingly difficult for even a quantum computer to successfully complete an attack.

More importantly, Project Eleven is about funding researchers and coordinating with the broader blockchain ecosystem to prepare for the Q-Day. Given its fragmented nature, a more centralized coordination is required to deliver a viable level of readiness.

The Bottom Line

It is safe to say that quantum computing left the fringe talking point space and became a valuation factor. Even if Q-Day remains a decade away, the mere signaling effect is already doing its work.

This is how narratives quietly weaken: what once looked like structural certainty starts trading like conditional risk – similar to a dividend yield trap, where perceived safety masks a fragile underlying premise.

From preparations being made in the present, Bitcoin’s long-term survival is likely, but its simplicity premium may be vanishing. If post-quantum readiness becomes a prerequisite for institutional capital and centralization, Bitcoin then loses its elegant monetary primitive perception and turns into a heavily engineered system. 

Consequently, this would not make Bitcoin “digital gold” but more heavy duty digital infrastructure. That is certainly a factor to consider in its next adoption lifecycle. 

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