Concerns over quantum computing are already limiting Bitcoin’s growth by making institutional investors more cautious, according to Stacks co-founder Muneeb Ali.
Speaking on Cointelegraph’s Chain Reaction podcast, Ali said uncertainty around Bitcoin’s ability to withstand future quantum attacks is enough to delay large allocations from risk-averse institutions. 「There is already a ceiling on the growth of Bitcoin because of quantum fears,」 he said.
Ali argued that investor confidence is unlikely to fully recover until Bitcoin developers establish a credible path toward quantum-resistant security. Stacks, the project he co-founded, is a Bitcoin layer-2 network built to bring smart contracts and decentralized applications to Bitcoin while using Bitcoin as the underlying settlement layer.
Ali points to 2028 and 2030 as key dates
Ali said Bitcoin could move into a riskier period if developers fail to make meaningful progress on quantum-resistant security by 2028. In his view, the timeline matters because major upgrades usually take years to implement, and users would then need more time to move their holdings to new addresses.
He pointed to 2030 as a target for transitioning Bitcoin to quantum-resistant security, citing guidance from the US National Institute of Standards and Technology, or NIST. He also said advances in artificial intelligence could speed up quantum-computing development and bring that timeline forward to 2029.
Ali acknowledged that some Bitcoin supporters see the quantum threat as distant and believe current concerns are overstated. Even so, he said disagreement over how urgent the issue is can itself weaken investor confidence, especially if there is no credible roadmap for an upgrade.
The debate reaches beyond Bitcoin
Despite his warning, Ali said a sufficiently powerful quantum computer would more likely come from a major research laboratory than from an unknown attacker. He added that companies such as Google or Microsoft would have little reason to use such technology to steal Bitcoin because of the legal consequences that could follow.
He also said the impact would not stop with Bitcoin. 「If Bitcoin gets hit, everyone gets hit downstream as well,」 Ali said, arguing that a quantum security failure in Bitcoin would affect the broader cryptocurrency industry, including projects working on their own protections.
Developers are testing defensive options
At the same time, developers are exploring ways to protect Bitcoin from quantum attacks. In September, StarkWare said researchers had reduced the estimated computing cost of preparing an experimental quantum-resistant Bitcoin transaction by 79% after a weeklong optimization challenge.
That approach does not require changes to Bitcoin’s consensus rules. Still, the latest cost reductions have only been shown in benchmark tests. StarkWare has described the method as a last-resort option and continues to support a protocol-level upgrade as the longer-term answer.
