Glassnode: 7.12M Bitcoin Exposed to Quantum Risk, 35% of Supply

Glassnode's new count finds 7,12 million BTC, or 35.4% of every coin in circulation, already has its public key printed on Bitcoin's public ledger. Think of that key as a lock anyone can study — today's computers can't pick it, but a sufficiently large quantum machine theoretically could, and then move the coins. Address reuse accounts for 25.8% of supply sitting exposed, while 11.6% of supply is exposed on exchange addresses.

Glassnode's entity-level data breaks the exchange exposure down sharply: Robinhood shows 100%, Binance 85%, and Coinbase about 5%. US government holdings register none. The analytics firm notes these figures are not security ratings.

Coinbase is the custodian for most US spot Bitcoin ETFs, and the company isn't sitting still. One of its analysts has publicly warned about quantum threats, and on October 29 the CEO said the work is already underway. “We have begun the work to upgrade our custody to be post-quantum,” he said.

For anyone who reused an address, the exit is simple. Glassnode says one transaction moving those coins to a fresh address ends the exposure entirely. But roughly 1 million BTC sits in early addresses tied to Satoshi Nakamoto, according to Ethereum Foundation researcher Justin Drake, and those coins have not moved in more than 15 years.

That's where the fight gets political. A draft proposal from Casa's Jameson Lopp would freeze coins that never upgrade, Satoshi's included, while Blockstream CEO Adam Back favors optional upgrades instead of a forced migration. In March, Google said a quantum machine with fewer than 500,000 qubits could break this encryption in minutes — no such machine exists, and Back has pegged one as 20 to 40 years away.

The money at stake is enormous. At Bitcoin's current market price, the exposed coins are worth more than $500 billion, up against an earlier ARK Invest estimate of over $480 billion. CoinShares, meanwhile, counted only about 10,200 BTC as worth targeting for genuine market impact. Nasdaq-listed Next Technology Holding approved selling or pledging about 5,833 BTC on October 30, listing quantum computing among other risks. Lopp's proposal and a separate draft, BIP-360, still have no activation date.