Responding to a question about whether advancing quantum research puts Bitcoin at risk, Adam Back posted on X:
Quote from: Adam Back on November 15, 2025
Probably not for 20-40 years, if then. And there are quantum secure signatures, NIST standardized SLH-DSA last year. Bitcoin can add over time, as the evaluation continues and be quantum ready, long before cryptographically relevant quantum computers arrive.
Back reframed the quantum threat as a solvable engineering problem with a multi-decade runway. Bitcoin Improvement Proposal 360 (BIP-360), drafted by Jameson Lopp, outlines a gradual transition to post-quantum-resistant outputs using NIST-standardized algorithms. As of 2025, the highest-capacity quantum systems remain far below the threshold needed to run Shor’s algorithm against Bitcoin’s elliptic curve signatures.
This Adam Back quantum-threat statement is treated by the bitcoin quantum threat analysis as one of its two anchor data points for the §4 timeline argument (alongside the NSA-2035 institutional line) and re-cited in §6 as one of the two best-documented points on the named-cryptographer-adjacent timeline.