Nearly 7 Million Bitcoin is Sitting in a Quantum Minefield, Including Satoshi’s

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Well, hold onto your digital hats! Apparently, nearly 6.7 million Bitcoin are currently lounging around in quantum-vulnerable addresses, doing absolutely nothing. These coins haven’t budged in years, some of them have been on vacation for over a decade. And, just for a bit of extra spice, some of these sleepy coins are believed to belong to the elusive Satoshi Nakamoto. How convenient, right?

At this point, these coins are the equivalent of a treasure chest, only instead of gold, it’s a mountain of Bitcoin – and the chest is sitting at the edge of a quantum cliff. It’s the most valuable target in the history of financial crime, just waiting for a brave quantum hacker to take a swing at it.

The Bitcoin Exposure Nobody Fixed

Enter the latest whitepaper from Google Quantum AI, released on March 30, 2026. This paper finally maps out the scale of Bitcoin’s quantum vulnerability – because, apparently, no one was paying attention before.

According to the research, there are 100,000 Bitcoin addresses just sitting there, ripe for the taking. They are vulnerable to what is called “at-rest attacks,” which means a sufficiently powerful quantum computer could swipe the private keys of these wallets without the owners even knowing it. How delightful! In total, these addresses are home to about 6.7 million BTC.

Why Old Bitcoin Addresses Are the Most Vulnerable

The most at-risk Bitcoin are those locked away in Pay-to-Public-Key scripts from Bitcoin’s ancient, practically prehistoric, mining era of 2009 and 2010 – a time when the only thing more primitive than the tech was the idea that Bitcoin would one day be worth anything at all.

These scripts store the public key right on the blockchain, visible to anyone with half an eye. And with a quantum computer armed with Shor’s algorithm (don’t worry, it sounds complicated because it is), someone could easily snatch the private key and drain the address dry. Poof. Gone. Like a rabbit from a magician’s hat, only less impressive.

Interestingly, around address rank 6,000, there’s a juicy concentration of 50 BTC addresses. Each one contains exactly one early mining reward. These coins are the oldest of the old, untouched since Bitcoin’s baby years. They probably think they’re safe – but, spoiler alert, they’re not.

“Progress on quantum from Bitcoin core developers is important, because there are parts of the Bitcoin community – whether they should be or not – that are worried about quantum and want to see it taken seriously and addressed. As more information comes out and people see it being worked on, that will be positive,” said Matt Hougan, Chief Investment Officer at Bitwise, BeInCrypto Expert Council.

The Problem That Cannot Be Patched

Here’s the kicker – unlike your active wallet that can be upgraded to the latest security standards, dormant addresses can’t be fixed. They are like an old, rusty lock on a treasure chest that no one can repair. And as quantum technology advances, this lock will become a huge target, growing more dangerous by the second.

Google’s researchers estimate that about 1.7 million BTC are locked in these vintage P2PK scripts, and the total quantum-vulnerable supply could balloon to a staggering 6.9 million BTC when address reuse is considered. That’s an awful lot of Bitcoin just waiting for a quantum thief to make their move.

So what happens when a quantum computer can just stroll in and take these coins without breaking a sweat? No one really knows. But the community is tossing around some ideas, like protocol-level destruction of vulnerable coins (goodbye, Bitcoin!) or some fancy new legal frameworks for regulated recovery, which they’ve dubbed “digital salvage.” If you ask me, it sounds like a new kind of treasure hunt, only with far fewer pirates and a lot more government red tape.

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2026-03-31 18:32