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Amid Bitcoin (BTC)’s quantum computing debate, BTQ Technologies director Chris Tam warned that advances in the field are moving faster than many crypto investors expected. In a recent interview, Tam said the real danger is a sufficiently advanced quantum computer deriving private keys from exposed public keys and stealing coins. The comments land as major internet infrastructure companies like Google and Cloudflare now target 2029 for post-quantum migration, showing how quickly the broader security timeline is shifting.

Why the Bitcoin quantum debate is heating up again

In the interview with David Lin posted on April 26, Tam argued that the core risk to Bitcoin is wallet security. He said a quantum attacker could eventually derive a private key from a public key “within minutes,” which would let them seize funds from vulnerable addresses if Bitcoin does not migrate to quantum-resistant cryptography. 

This concern has moved well beyond theoretical inside tech circles. The National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) finalized its first post-quantum standards in 2024, including ML-DSA and SLH-DSA for digital signatures, and Google and Cloudflare both recently accelerated their own post-quantum roadmaps toward 2029.

Additionally, Dr. Edoardo Persichetti, FAU Associate Professor, General Chair of EUROCRYPT 2026, advisor at qLabs, and co-author of the NIST-standardized post-quantum encryption called Hamming Quasi-Cyclic (HQC), recently told TechGaged that the threat is surgical in its precision and well-understood by the math community.

Asked by Lin when Bitcoin would drop to $0, Tam explained:

“What started as a 2040 estimate for when quantum computers could break encryption has moved up pretty much every single year to the point now where as a couple weeks ago you have companies like Google and Cloudflare setting a timeline for post-quantum cryptography migration to 2029. So that’s a 10-year upgrade in the estimates for when we want to have a quantum secure world.”

Tam also pointed to a growing split inside the crypto industry over what comes next. Bitcoin developers and researchers have been debating whether the network should eventually freeze or sunset older, quantum-vulnerable address types, especially long-dormant wallets that may never migrate. 

This is important, as the threat is also about confidence as it is about theft. If investors stop believing that coins held today will still be safely under controlled, the valuation logic behind Bitcoin as long-term digital property starts to wobble.

What BTQ is building, and what it could mean for crypto

Meanwhile, BTQ says it’s working on both hardware and software aimed at post-quantum security, including a Bitcoin Quantum test network designed as a quantum-safe fork of Bitcoin’s codebase. 

The company has described that network as a “quantum canary,” a place to test migration tools and post-quantum signatures without changing Bitcoin mainnet itself. BTQ has previously said its roadmap includes a mainnet launch and migration tooling after the earlier testnet rollout.

Tam’s broader message was that crypto cannot treat this as a distant problem anymore. He said every year the estimated timeline for meaningful quantum risk keeps moving closer, and the cost of doing nothing keeps rising. 

For Bitcoin holders, the market implication is that even before a real attack happens, each major breakthrough in quantum hardware or algorithms could increase pressure on the network to prove it can upgrade before trust gets tested for real.