AI and Quantum: Trump's $6 Billion Plan Could Also Impact Bitcoin

The United States puts 215 million dollars on the table to accelerate the development of fault-tolerant quantum computers. The Department of Energy’s goal is to demonstrate machines with hundreds of logical qubits by 2028. For Bitcoin, the news deserves attention. A sufficiently powerful quantum machine could one day attack the signatures that protect certain bitcoin. And this week, an Ethereum researcher added another concern: AI could accelerate the threat even before the arrival of the famous “Q-Day”.

Bitcoin now looks at the American quantum race

The American program has a name: Quantum Genesis Q Competition. The Department of Energy wants to fund companies capable of building quantum computers that are truly usable for scientific research. This acceleration comes as AI already allows a significant reduction in the cost of certain quantum protections for Bitcoin.

The competition has up to 215 million dollars in funding planned. The first phase will pay for several intermediate steps. Then, 100 million dollars will be distributed among teams capable of demonstrating a scientific machine with at least 100 logical qubits. Two additional envelopes of 50 million each concern the thresholds of 150 and 200 logical qubits.

The DOE wants systems with “a few hundred” logical qubits by 2028. This figure deserves explanation. Current quantum computers often announce hundreds or thousands of physical qubits. They remain extremely error-prone. A logical qubit groups many physical qubits to achieve sufficiently reliable computation.

It is these logical qubits that really count when talking about attacking modern cryptography. The US government does not hide its ambitions. The Quantum Genesis program aims to combine quantum computing, supercomputers, and artificial intelligence. Priority applications include chemistry, materials physics, applied mathematics, and nuclear sciences.

Bitcoin is not a targeted subject. But advances made for science could end up producing machines capable of solving the mathematical problems that today secure cryptocurrencies. That is where the topic becomes much more interesting.

Why a quantum computer could threaten certain BTC

Bitcoin uses several cryptographic mechanisms. SHA-256 notably secures mining and is involved in the network’s hash system. Transactions also rely on secp256k1 elliptic curve cryptography.

It is primarily this second part that worries. A private key allows signing a transaction. The associated public key allows the network to verify that the signature is valid. With a classical computer, retrieving the private key from the public key is considered practically impossible.

A sufficiently powerful quantum computer using Shor’s algorithm could change this equation. Theoretically, it could solve the mathematical problem underlying this protection and reconstruct a private key from an exposed public key.

Not today.

The official page devoted to Ethereum’s quantum resistance, which also uses elliptic cryptography for its accounts, cites a Google Quantum AI study published in March. It estimates that about 1,200 logical qubits may be necessary to attack a 256-bit elliptic cryptography, much less than some older estimates.

Bitcoin facing quantum: a threat still distant, but very real

The DOE aims for 100 to 200 logical qubits in its competition. The gap remains significant. And even this comparison alone is not enough: the number of qubits is not the only factor. One must also consider the number of operations possible, error correction, machine stability, and the time required for the attack.

No existing quantum computer today can steal Bitcoins by calculating the private keys of their owners.

The threat is no longer ignored by developers. The BIP-361 project estimates that by March 1, 2026, more than 34% of bitcoins had already revealed an on-chain public key. This does not mean that 34% of BTC can be stolen now. It simply identifies a portion of the supply that would constitute a more direct target if a cryptographically relevant quantum machine appeared.

An Ethereum researcher now adds AI to the problem

The debate took another dimension this week. Justin Drake, a researcher at the Ethereum Foundation, called on the blockchain industry to calmly start preparing what he calls a “bunker mode.” His concern is not only quantum. Drake believes that rapid progress in artificial intelligence in mathematics could eventually discover unknown shortcuts against ECDSA. In his most pessimistic scenario, the problem could become serious in “months rather than years.”

He does not say that ECDSA has been broken. No practical attack allowing retrieval today of a Bitcoin wallet’s private key from its public key has been publicly demonstrated. The warning rather comes from the speed of progress in AI-assisted mathematics. OpenAI recently published hundreds of mathematical works produced by an internal model. Drake sees this as a sign that AI systems are becoming capable of very quickly exploring problems long reserved for human researchers.

Bitcoin relies precisely on the assumption that some mathematical problems remain extraordinarily difficult to solve. If AI found a much more efficient new algorithm, the brute force power required could decrease. Vitalik Buterin took this assumption seriously enough to respond publicly to Drake.

He goes even further: some solutions considered quantum-resistant, notably cryptography based on Euclidean lattices, could also suffer attack advances thanks to mathematics produced by AI.

But Buterin refuses panic. He does not recommend users quickly move their assets. Poorly prepared migration can itself cause losses. This nuance is important. A researcher’s is not a broken cryptography.

Bitcoin addresses are not all exposed in the same way

Drake nevertheless proposes a simple measure for large holders: when easy to do, prioritize new addresses whose public keys are not yet visible on-chain. Why? Some Bitcoin address forms hide the public key behind a hash as long as the funds have not been spent. This removes from a potential attacker the starting point necessary to find the private key.

But this mechanism does not protect all coins. Old Pay-to-Public-Key outputs directly expose public keys. Taproot also has some peculiarities of this type. And when a modern address is reused after spending, its public key may have been revealed.

This debate has existed for several months in the ecosystem. Adam Back had already called on Bitcoin to gradually prepare its transition facing quantum. Opinions however differ strongly on the urgency.

Some researchers speak of a window of a few years. Others estimate the necessary hardware is still decades away. Current experiments remain tiny compared to the real cryptographic problem. It is precisely to avoid having to decide at the last moment that developers are already working on different solutions. Bitcoin was never built with full post-quantum cryptography. It will probably have to evolve before the threat becomes real.

Bitcoin already prepares several exits

One of the most followed proposals is BIP-360. This project introduces a new output type called Pay-to-Merkle-Root, or P2MR. The idea is notably to remove the key spending path used in Taproot, which exposes a public key.

BIP-360 does not make Bitcoin fully quantum-resistant. It reduces part of the attack surface and prepares an architecture to more easily integrate new signatures. The project is currently in the proposal stage and is not activated on Bitcoin.

Another project, BIP-361, goes much further. It imagines that after the introduction of a genuine post-quantum method, Bitcoin could gradually stop accepting some old vulnerable signature types. The goal would be to encourage holders to migrate before Q-Day.

The proposal is also still in draft form. Institutions are beginning to look closely at the topic. BlackRock, Coinbase, Strategy and several other players have joined a consortium endowed with 15 million dollars to work on Bitcoin’s quantum security. Preparation therefore now goes beyond a few developer discussions. It becomes a financial subject. And governments do not slow down their own research.