Posts tagged #Quantum computing
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Bitcoin and quantum computing: counting for yourself with a node
The third piece of the «Bitcoin and quantum computing» family: not the numbers, but how to redo them. Every command needed to count for yourself, with your own node, how many coins already have their public key in view: the census of the UTXO set by lock type and by age, the pass that counts reuse, the outpoint index, the check of your own addresses without handing them to anyone. Three levels, from minutes to days, that can be left half done while still giving a verifiable result. Every step carries the real output of our own run at block 957,301 and the fingerprints anyone must land on by redoing it. Public code, MIT licence.
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Bitcoin and quantum computing: the data (July 2026)
How much of all bitcoin already has its public key in view, since when, and at what pace it keeps exposing itself: 7.02 million BTC, about 35% of the circulating supply, of which 5.08 million exposed by address reuse and 1.93 million by construction (the original P2PK and Taproot). A census of the UTXO set at block 957,301, carried out with an ordinary node and reproducible down to the fingerprint, read table by table and figure by figure: concentration per lock, the curve by epoch of revelation, the pace of reuse year by year. This text is a deep dive off the path that starts from the post on the quantum computing threat: there the reasoning and the wider considerations, here the numbers and the method to check them with.
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Bitcoin and quantum computing
A quantum computer will not be able to rewrite Bitcoin's ledger: it will probably be able, one day, to open some of its locks. What Shor's and Grover's algorithms actually do, why elliptic curve signatures are the target and hashes are not, which coins already have their public key in view (about 35% of the circulating supply, recounted on our own node) and which do not, where the machines stand with dates attached, where the post-quantum migrations under discussion stand (BIP-360, BIP-361), and why the hard part is not technical but a matter of governance: what to do with the coins of those who can no longer move them. A snapshot declared as of July 2026.